I’m missing people today. I’m missing places and the way we used to be. I’m missing old songs and old friends and old clothes. The beauty of spring is always pierced with sorrow: I so fiercely love and cherish every second of its too-ephemeral newness. I miss my family and my mom and god, my dad. Damn it, dad. I shouldn’t be missing you; you should STILL BE HERE.
People move in and out of our lives, they flower and sprout in our hearts where the uprooting will hurt the most, and often we let them wither and fade away without even realizing what we’re doing until it’s too late. Other times we turn around and someone we thought was a fixture—was firmly planted—is, without explanation or even with, just not there anymore. You teeter on the brink of an abyss when that happens, and hope you don’t fall howling into the grief that grips and shakes you.
I miss Becky and Debbie and Julie and Chris and Kathey because I’m not around them daily anymore, and there was a time in my life when they were everything. They were ALWAYS there. You get used to moving and leaving, whether its you that’s doing the moving and leaving, or others. That’s how life goes: we all move on. We all change, we grow together, then apart. Sometimes we’re lucky and our lives after splitting wind their ways back together and we walk apace again for awhile.
It’s not only those friends from times gone by that pull the old heart-connections. I miss Elizabeth and Marilyn and Sheryl and Melanie. Even if it’s not deliberate abandonment on anyone’s part, it’s a huge bummer that voices are silenced, that a gap has grown, that a space that was filled so often is now so often left gaping and empty.
People too far away: my brother, my sister, my cousins, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles. People too busy with their own lives: Geena, Angie, Kelly, Emily. People who are right here in the same house with me, even: my children as babies, my husband as my boyfriend, my fiance, my newlywed man.
Even the child I once was, the young woman, the student, the independent single: I miss me, too. I miss the pets I’ve loved and I miss the ones we’ll never have. I miss the choices I once had, and the choices not made. Some days the reality of what you once had around you, what you most likely took for granted, is overwhelmingly painful.
Reach out, quick! Make a phone call. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Say hello to an online friend or an offline one; any one will do: that’s why they’re friends! Embrace a loved one. Reconnect with the ones gone missing and remember to treasure the ones snugly entwined in your heart.