An Open Letter To My Friend Three Years Later
Today, I am on the tail end of my vacation in Europe. I’m not home.
Just like I wasn’t home three years ago on the day you passed away.
Today, I am thousands of miles away from where you and I made our memories with our friends — miles from your house, where we had countless pool parties and late-night conversations. An entire ocean separates me from the beach in New Jersey where we went on your senior trip back in 2009. That was before any of us drank; we were high on life, breathing in the salty air, laughing together, wondering if life could ever, truly, get better than this.
I was only a two-hour drive away from you on September 16, 2012, but that distance felt so much longer, so much deeper. Like a dark chasm that swallowed everything, that split open my chest as I gasped for air, curled up on my college bed, rocking back and forth as my boyfriend tried to console me.
Or maybe it wasn’t distance. Being hours away at college on the day you died brought a whole new layer of guilt and what-ifs, but the reality is that if I had been only a mile away, my world would have felt just as empty that day. Your amazing, wonderful, kind family was right there in my hometown, and there’s absolutely no way to even comprehend the depth of grief they experienced… still experience.
No, distance didn’t matter. When you left us, it was like you handed us all a piece of glass. Every time we touched it, it pierced us in a new way, but we couldn’t stop turning it over in our hands, feeling the excruciating sting with every revolution. So together, we turned it in our hands, and together, we talked about it.
Togetherness helped. Talking about you helped.
But the only true comfort in the face of grief is time, and time alone. When it was still so fresh, we all thought about you every single second of the day. The glass would cut us when we would cry while doing the dishes, tears streaming and pulsing with the life of you. The glass would cut us when we would get in our cars and suddenly arrive at our destinations, realizing that we don’t remember how we got there.
You weren’t truly gone because your name was constantly echoing in our brains, louder and louder still.
Three years later, time has abated that echo just a little bit. The grief is still there — it always will be — but it’s started to sink under the surface, reminding us of its existence when we least expect it. But with this relief from the glass comes a whole new guilt.
When someone loses a loved one, it feels as though the only way to keep their memory alive is to think about them every single moment — to cry, to feel the pain, to mourn. To turn over the glass and feel the sting. If we let time heal our wounds, it means that we’ve let go of that person forever.
Or at least that’s what we fear.
It’s been three years since you left, and we’ve been turning that glass over and over in our palms. But time has smoothed its edges. That glass you gave us has become frosted, smooth, cool against our skin, something to hold onto and turn in our palms without the deep cuts.
The pain isn’t what keeps you alive in our minds. That’s something only time could tell us, too. Together, we turn the frosted glass in our hands. We tell each other, “Remember that time when Jason…” without our eyes immediately filling with tears. We feel an ache in our hearts, but it’s a beautiful kind of pain, because we were given the immense privilege to know you during your brief time here on this Earth.
Time has comforted us, but not by erasing you, as so many of us who have lost a loved one fear. We still have moments when we break down at the thought of you; we still have days that are harder than others.
But often, we’re able to remember you without the constant pain. Your memory is so much more than just wounds.
Today, three years after your death, I’m roaming around Europe. Today, I wish you were able to see it with me. But I turn over the frosted glass in my hands and look up at the sky.
And I remember you.
