Losing things.

Tonight an old friend called to tell us that another old friend died.

It's been a long time since we've seen K, or any of the other friends we had back then. Though we were all a tight-knit group in high school, time and motivation kind of carried us apart. You see, my sweetie and I were among the ones who went to school and found meaningful employment. We had a few other friends go that way too, and we periodically keep in touch. The other side of the group tended more toward early procreation and copious use of both marijuana and welfare.

It's not that we thought they were bad people, really. They fell into a cycle of inaction and consequences brought about by that same inaction. When things got hard, they blamed the universe for their problems rather than seeking the real causes. They smoked a lot of weed and relaxed into its comfort -- forgetting about important things like dreams and meaningful pursuits along the way. It got to where we were uncomfortable hanging out around all the drama, since it wasn't really our style and we were too busy having lives to get into recreational drugs.

In school, they were bright young people with a lot of ideas and plans. Many of them had adverse home lives that they had to overcome . . . but then, so did some of us who turned out productive. I can't really pinpoint what the difference was. My best friend W died just after his (and their) graduation. I was nearly killed in the car accident that took his life. The loss affected us all profoundly, and sometimes I wonder if that was part of it. It was a shared moment in our history and for a time, it drew us so close together. I know that my husband and I took something very tangible from that loss in the form of our own friendship, which had always been strong but grew even stronger as the two who were closest to the one we'd lost. Maybe everyone else took something too, but perhaps it was more damaging than healing in some instances.

When W died, he and K weren't particularly friends. They'd had a falling out, and I think K felt the distance acutely when the rest of us were grieving. He too had lost a longtime friend, but the unstable footing they had been on when W died seemed to put K in a different space from everyone else. He was still angry, but also sad. I think he didn't get to process the loss the same way we did. We all had each other, but he was kind of there on the outside. After high school, K worked a series of unskilled jobs and dated several women, some long-term, but never long enough to settle down. He periodically shared an apartment with friends and split that time living with his dad. When he died, at age 35, he was back to the part of the cycle where he lived at home.

So now we're going to a memorial service of sorts this weekend. It's odd, because I've found myself thinking about our group recently, in that nostalgic-but-not-realistic way. It's like I explained to my sweetie tonight -- I wanted to get in touch with them, kind of -- but with some sort of social condom in place so that if they were still drama-ridden and distanced from reality, I could pretend it had never happened. This event will be an interesting fusion of the past and present, and though a small part of me is curious, mostly I'm dreading it.

I still really miss these people. It's too bad that what I miss is the kids they were, and not the adults they became.