This picture was taken 4.5 years ago, moments before Bobby and I started our journey to the great land of Illinois. That's our U-Haul. That's my best friend Julia. I'm brimming with excitement, eager to start this new adventure. My thoughts for the last couple months have been only of our new home, new school, and the endless potential of his entirely unknown place called "Champaign-Urbana". Relations with Julia were rough, to say the least. I didn't understand her. Yes, I would be moving far away. Yes, we would still be friends. I knew Julia was sad, but it seemed like more than that. Only in retrospect do I finally see her position more clearly.
She was mourning.
Like I am mourning now.
Our first day in Champaign-Urbana, we drove the U-Haul trailer up to the married student housing. It was a dismal looking place. Our apartment was miniscule, old, and completely foreign to us. We just opened up the trailer and started unloading. A few minutes into our move, my mom stops me in the stairwell and says quietly, "There's a woman outside watching us move your stuff. You might want to talk to her." I stepped outside to meet this mysterious woman. It turned out that she and her family were the only other members of the church in all of married student housing and she happened to live only two buildings down. This was the beginning of my friendship with Rachel.
Sunday dinners, late nights chatting, temple trips, Chicago, Indianapolis, countless whispered comments in Sunday School and Relief Society, three births, Ladies Night Out, Cub Scouts, and numerous play dates later, she is the one about to begin the grand adventure. Her husband has finally graduated. Next week they are moving to a job on the west coast.
I am in mourning. It was especially bad last week. I wanted to help her prepare, but I couldn't stand to be with her because everything we did reminded me that she would be leaving. That wasn't good for anyone, so I decided to tackle my feelings and figure out what I was really afraid of. No more emotion-stuffing. Time for understanding. It didn't take long once I started talking it out with Bobby. And here it is: I don't want our friendship to change. It's that simple. But you know what? That's not a choice I have right now. Our relationship MUST change. It already has. What I CAN choose is how I will deal with the few days remaining.
I choose to be happy for them. I choose to help them any way I can as they begin this journey.
I choose to mourn after they leave.
I write about "them" and "they" but I really mean "her" and "she." It's just harder to write it that way.
And in these thoughts, I am also thinking about Julia. I'm looking back at what our relationship has become since the day this picture was taken. Yes, our friendship has changed. In many ways, it is not as close as it once was. But something amazing has happened---our friendship has endured. I love it and I love her still. This gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, the world won't cave in on me when my good friend finally loads up that truck and drives away. And maybe there's another Julia or Rachel out there that I will come to love as richly as these two amazing women.
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I started to reply to this, but I was post call and tired and it made me cry remembering. And I still can't find the right words that express my feelings. Mourning, that's probably the most apt word for it. It hurt more than I could possible say losing you, worrying about how things would change (I think I had been consumed with that worry since your engagement). And you're right. They did. But in nothing really critical. I still consider you my best friend. And, I think, now that we've had more than 10 years at this friendship thing, that's not going to change.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you're losing your friend. *HUGS* I hope you really can enjoy those last few days with her. That's the biggest regret that I have, that I was so busy with school and finals, that I didn't get that chance to see you more. So take advantage of it--the tears can wait.
Love you.
Julia, you were the first friend ever that managed to keep in touch with me after a physical move. Ever. That certainly says something :) Our relationship has changed but it still exists, unlike all the other friendships I had growing up. We can still get together and have fun, share holidays, and even *GASP* chat on the phone every once in a while.
ReplyDeleteI think you've helped me grow up a little. I'm finally learning to appreciate my friends.
It's done. Rachel and her family are now on their way west, despite the whole family being miserably sick and the weather being freakishly bitter cold. Rachel is one strong woman. She directed the whole scene yesterday: final packing/disassembling, comforting the barfing child, shuttling the healthy child all over town to play one last time with his friends, constantly reassuring the youngest child that he would not be left behind, filling out and mailing lease applications (no, they still didn't have a place to live as of yesterday), coordinating and instructing the Elders Quorum moving crew (6-7 men, depending on whether you count Dewain as a contributing member: collapsed and exhausted upstairs in his snow gear, shivering to the bone with fever), coordinating and supervising the Relief Society cleaning crew (3 women), and somehow managing to do all this knowing that the next day she would be driving a van filled with said children for four days straight to an as yet undetermined and almost completely foreign location. Did I leave anything out? Oh yeah, she was sick, too.
ReplyDeleteThe RS girls were cleaning until 11pm last night. Towards the end, we were all a little delirious. The only thing keeping me awake was a rapidly dwindling supply of Twizzlers and the lively kitchen banter. The men had gone home, Dewain and the boys had gone to the hotel, and Rachel's dad was dozing in the living room waiting to take her to the hotel when we were done cleaning. There was less and less for us to do until we finally decided that we had done enough. And that was it. I was lucky enough to be in the company of two other great women when we said our brief goodbyes to Rachel. That made it easier, somehow. I almost thought I could hold off the tears for one more day. Not quite. The mourning began as soon as I turned my back to the door.
And I will probably be sad for a while, but not hopeless. This is a period of mourning, not desperation.