Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
I’ve been back in Rotorua for a few days… My bestest bud from high school has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Skin cancer, they cut it out a few years ago (and I’m still recovering from the gruesome photos of the whole in his back). Evidently they missed some, and now it’s everywhere, including in several of his vertebrae. Apparently that’s when they stop trying to do anything about it, and start giving you all the morphine you want.
Actually he’s doing pretty well. He doesn’t seem like he’s dying at all. Especially given that he was only supposed to have about three months, and that was a couple of months ago. It’s weird.
Part of me keeps expecting him to turn around and say "Ha! Fooled ya... you really thought I was dying, didn't you..."
When I was in third form, and he was in sixth, I used to phone him at night and we’d talk until we had to get up the next morning. We were in love with the same girl. He got me in to poetry; basically my first poems were trying to be like him. When we were old and doddery we were going to have a house together, with a porch and a stream to play pooh-sticks.
I’ve been overwhelmed by an urge to get back in touch with all the friends I’ve drifted away from. I feel slightly desperate about all the people I used to be so close to, who have slipped out of my life. I’ve been going through old letters, photos, mementos. There are so many events and relationships that seemed so significant and enduring at the time, and now... some of them I’d forgotten about completely until I uncovered a diary entry or a ticket stub. Others I do think about from time to time, I just never get around to emailing or looking them up in the phone book.
Some people… I know we will always be able to pick up the threads again, no matter how long we go without talking, no matter where our lives take us.
Some people… I am realising why we drifted apart. Because now, when we do catch up, we have absolutely nothing to say.
Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you
*hug*
one of my most loved favourite people in the world has cancer. it's a lot to get your head around isn't it. the world without them in it.