Stupid Questions

I honestly thought this would never happen again considering the grief we've put each other through at one time or another over the last few years.

Context: a common friend died ten years ago on 26 May. The foggy pink lenses of nostalgia may have colored my assessment of him, but I'll go ahead and say he was the best of us. 25 May 2008 had me sharing a ride with two people who swore on separate occasions that they would never speak to me again.

Yet here we were on the occasion of a friend's tenth death anniversary, speaking.

I am humbled and thankful by the grace that brought us back together even as I am mightily pissed off that it had to take two deaths for this to come to pass. Rey's, ten years ago (the excuse that brought us all to the same place), and mine (a symbolic death), last year.

No one really wants to sacrifice friends on the altars of their own fear or their own self-righteousness. No one truly wants to be the lamb, or goat-- the sin eater who has to die (exile himself). But it happens. It happens all the time.

I'm just one of the losers who perpetually seeks to understand, and perhaps one day, coopt and subvert the dynamics of this. Someone who bothers to talk about it outside the permitted occasions (beer with friends, funerals and bedside death watches) and put the findings on paper. Because seriously, it doesn't have to happen.

[Digression: I should have studied to be a thanatologist.]

From where I sit and type, all of this pain was needless. None of us had to go through our separate calvaries, swearing that our paths would never again cross, just to find each other after a year or two.

No need for the self-righteous posturing. No need to make public declarations that the other person is dirt when you know he isn't. No need for the greek choruses repeating and reinforcing your own bullshit. No need to form your defensive barriers against friendships that need to be repaired. No need to take those courses of action to their logical conclusion-- another useless goodbye and good riddance.

People who love should not be made to eat of this pile of hot steaming horse puckey.

Look, guys, I know I should be happy, and I am.

But this theme is simply too important to me. Without the meaning I seek I simply can't let this go.