Another day, another funeral. Anymore, it feels like everyone around me’s dying. It’s odd. We’re too young for this sort of thing. Trevor was only 49 and though he wasn’t in the best shape, it’s still not something you expect. I couldn’t help but feel like a fraud during the memorial service. Everyone else seemed to be from this side of Trevor’s life, the people packed in students, or colleagues, or drinking buddies. And then there was Greg and I, in the second to back row in our matching suits and ties (unplanned), glancing at our feet while everyone else was crying because we had only spoken to Trevor half a dozen times in the last decade. When the tears did come, they weren’t so much for the man in the casket as the friend I had lost some thirty years earlier. Growing up, we had been inseparable. Sometime during high school, though, when I went off to Latin and he went off somewhere else, we drifted apart. With no play dates to keep us together anymore, we saw each other less and less until suddenly we were standing at his wedding, realizing we hadn’t spoken since my own almost ten years before. There were always vows to keep in touch, of course, but attempts to get together fell through and eventually we stopped attempting all together. Trevor Brenham died a stranger to me, his children only known through the Christmas cards I got every year, his wife just a pretty face by his side that I said hello to on the few occasions we ran into each other when I was back home. I learned today about the Trevor I didn’t know, the teacher, the lover, the father. His widow, resplendent in her grief and the black-and-white dress she wore, hugged me tight like if she let go she too might die. I couldn’t help but feel I’m collecting widows as I offered my condolences and she, pushing a strand of red hair out of her red-rimmed green eyes, said we really must see each other outside of occasions like this. It’s always said at funerals, just as common as I’m sorry, or he was a good guy. We never follow up on it, though, just think of the person once or twice before life swallows us up and then suddenly it is their funeral we are attending.

I flew home to an empty hotel room, a restless city. Tonight, I am going trick-or-treating with the kids and I will hug them extra hard. Still, I cannot help but wonder if we’ll ever change or if we’ll all spend our lives promising to keep in touch but never reaching out.