One week of melancholy.

A week from today will be October 16, the two-year anniversary of my friend Kara's death.

I bring her up a lot, I know.  Part of it is because for the last two years, I've missed having someone in my life that I tell everything to.  Part of it is because when she died, I had a lot of awful thoughts about "what if it had been me?"  And because I suppose it's only natural in times of shock to think the worst, I thought she'd probably do a better job of grieving or remembering or whatever it is that you go through after a death than I would, and because of that, I needed to be active in accurately representing the place she had in my life.  Both of those reasons are selfish; then again, I guess grief usually is, what with the griever being the one left behind.

Becky, Kara, and Crysal, Senior Week 2004.

The last time I visited her, I slept in one morning while she went to the doctor.  She came back with the news that she was going to need surgery on her knee, and though she was extremely disappointed (this would be the second surgery on that same knee), I watched her push it aside and be cheerful and happy for the duration of my stay.  That surgery, which wouldn't happen for several more weeks, eventually led to the blood clot that killed her.

During that same visit, we took off in her beat-up old car and went looking for creepy places in the Indiana countryside.  We found a (supposedly) haunted train tunnel that she'd been to with some other friends and she handed me her camera to snap a picture of her standing in the entryway.  Then we got lost in the middle of some farmland, and her car almost died, and suddenly I was half-terrified.  Kara, on the other hand, was in her element.  She laughed and laughed and expertly bluffed her way down one county road after another ("This looks right; let's see where it takes us!"), willing her car forward and getting us back to town just as the sun was setting.  I like to think of myself as being at least quasi-adventurous, but Kara was the real deal.  She once traveled across Siberia.  By train.  By herself.  As close to her as I was, I knew her insecurities well, but I also knew that she had a confidence and a bravery that couldn't be faked.  When she wanted to do something, she did it, and she did it full out.

She wanted us to make Post Secrets the last night of my visit, but I was tired and couldn't think of anything, so she made one by herself and was mad at me the entire time she did it.  I'm not sure she ever got over that, actually...  That same spirit that allowed her to climb into a train in Siberia also allowed her to hold grudges and to butt heads with anyone as hard-headed as she was (i.e., me).  But that was part of our friendship:  the way we were honest and open about most everything, including the ways in which we annoyed each other.

I don't regret not sending a Post Secret.  I do regret not somehow stealing hers, because it was sweet and about a boy and so Kara.

The only time I ever saw the picture of her that I took in front of the tunnel was at her visitation.  It was part of the slide show in the room opposite her body, and I almost threw up when I saw it, because it was unexpected, and also because it didn't seem that long ago at all that I had taken it.  And it hadn't been that long ago.  Not even six months.  She didn't look like herself at the visitation and that just made the whole thing more surreal.  In one room, there was a body that used to be my friend.  In the next room, she was grinning back at me, alive and happy and minutes from leading us into the middle of nowhere in rural Indiana. 

Looking back, I can see now how losing her as a friend led to some bad decisions on my part.  I've spent much of the past two years subconsciously trying to find someone to fill the void she left in my life, and yet simultaneously resisting the notion that anyone should replace her.  It's madness.  But now that we're two years out, I think maybe I'm finally coming to a peaceful emotional reconciliation.  She was my best friend during ten of the most important years of my life (18 to 28) and no one will ever be able to touch that.  And yet that won't (can't) be diminished by any relationships I form now or in the future.

I don't really feel myself "moving on" until I start to think back and it hits me how much has changed - how much living I've done - just in the small amount of time that she's been gone.  I also can't overlook the ways in which her death spurred so many of those changes.  Typical Kara.  Even now, she's pushing me to grow in ways no other friend ever has...

College reunion, 2009.