293: Remembrance via Langston Hughes

Dear friends

Today is quieter.
 
The other day, I remembered your wide smile and short dreads, the dreads that disappeared with age and title. Then, I remembered you are no longer here. A friend from my first job, fresh out of university, in those early democracy years. Then, I thought of her. The second from that job. The one who, twenty years ago, gave me a simple gift: a stainless-steel coffee scoop. I use it every morning. Some mornings it stops me. You both had your breath taken in that pandemic time. A third’s heart stopped in that time, too. They were all too young. Her especially. She’d just stepped into her thirties. And then another’s heart also stopped. Four friends. And then another, who had been hurt in ways a child should never be hurt, that no-one should, who’d stitched the wounds, and soothed the scars, and built a life, until the darkness called him in a way that he couldn’t escape, who lost sight of the light he was, who slapped away reaching hands, not because he’d stopped loving, but because he’d forgotten he was loveable. Five friends. And then, a sixth. I have promised him that one day I will write of him. I still can’t. He loved the parts of the map that said, “Here be dragons”. Not from bravado or machismo, but a naïve curiosity, a loving trust that all would be well, and maybe, just maybe, believing he might be immortal, which I hope is true. And then, one day, a dragon turned. Six friends. The seventh left three months ago. Her body had always fought her. Defying expert prediction, her spirit kept her here. She loved. Expansively. Deeply. She loved and was loved. She gifted me this: the foundation of sustained love is kindness.

Seven friends in seven years. You have your losses. We all do.

Langston Hughes wrote ‘Poem’ in 1925.

“I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began, —
I loved my friend.”
 
Karl