Memories, No Frills
During the summer I worked my worst-ever job, I found out through Facebook about the death of someone who’d once been incredibly close to me.
Our friendship was a series of fits and starts. Each time we spoke, we picked up wherever we’d left off, no matter how long it had been or how far apart we were.
Seeing the message, which was delivered by another former friend, felt like being punched in the chest not once, but twice. It was a double blow, painful and breathtaking, my solar plexus collapsing in on itself.
First, it was his name, bolded and blue in my inbox. Then it was hers, all lower caps, no frills:
not sure if you heard about (redacted), but
He linked to an article that explained the accident, though it didn’t really explain anything at all. Cause of death: car accident prompts more questions than answers, and I’ve never had the heart to dig deeper since it happened.
It’s hard just to think about her, which makes social media a bit of a landmine for me. Posts from her mom mash up with the memories feature on my feed. I’ll open Facebook to see photos of her at graduation practice or in our English class, sticking her tongue out because she used to hate how obsessive I was about documenting things.
I always thought that was ironic, given she had a degree in photography before we even graduated high school. She was drawn to Ansel Adams; I was drawn to Annie Leibovitz — but photography has never really been my thing. I just like photos of people because it feels like so many of them always leave.
I keep the photographs she gave me in acid-free plastic sleeves, tucked away in a box, safe from harm. They feel like pieces of our friendship that I’ve not yet lost. The photographs are easier to deal with than social media, because I know where they are. I can’t stumble upon them, hapless, in the middle of an already-emotional day.
Sometimes, it feels like these memories are shown to me with purpose. I’ll dream that she’s alive, telling me to stop stressing about my wedding, and the next day I’ll see a photo shared by her mom with no caption or context. Just her face, big smile and wide eyes, the most carefree person I’ve ever known.
It makes me feel like I’m in two places at once.
The last time we spoke on the phone, we were 20-years-old and I hadn’t heard from her in a year. She was never big on social media; she had Facebook, which she used, but mostly her feed was other people tagging her in pictures, events, and statuses. She preferred calls to texts and she had no concept of time differences. Actually talking to her always felt weightier because of it.
That night she called when it was hours past my self-imposed bedtime. She needed advice, she said, because she felt restless and wanted to move. We talked until the sun came up and the next night she called at a normal time to tell me she was moving to New Zealand.
It wasn’t one of the options we’d talked about the night before, when I was in my dorm room loft bed telling her about my first girlfriend because she was the only person I used to trust with those things. I said as much, and she laughed. She said, “You only live once, right?”
The next time we talked, it was via Facebook because she couldn’t afford international calling, but she wanted to ask if I’d be home when she visited. The answer was no — I was going on an adventure of my own, off to visit a significant other, and I wouldn’t be able to see my friend.
It wasn’t her last trip back to the states, but I didn’t make it out to see her the next time either.
We hadn’t spoken in months when I got the message about the accident. I still think about that; when I dream about her, when I see a photograph from when we occupied the same space.
It’s been almost four years since that car accident and sometimes I still forget she’s not here. It’s especially jarring when I dream about her, because when I wake up it feels like mourning all over again. It seems like such a horrible thing, to forget something as monumental as death, but maybe it isn’t.
Maybe our memories are as permanent as any of us can be. And if Facebook wants me to remember her as she was, no frills, then so be it. If she were here, she would tell me to get off Facebook.
She isn’t. So I’ll keep going with the memories I’ve got.
