A Friend From A Lifetime Away. And Two Blocks From Here

One of Fuh’s neighbors held the front door open for us as we left. Someone was smoking a cigarette on the stoop. Ten steps away was Bob, walking toward us.

“I know you,” I announced.

Bob looked up, as stunned as I was.

It was such a strange coincidence. We were in Brooklyn Heights for two hours, outdoors for less than five minutes. Had we not hurried away from Fuh’s to make a clean getaway after sticking Lumpyhead’s poopy diaper in Buttmunch’s pocket, we would have missed Bob by twenty steps.

The entire encounter was surreal. I stammered and repeated myself. I couldn’t remember Bob’s last name. It never occurred to me that Bob didn’t know Bump and I should have introduced them until Bob stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Bob.”

I neglected to give him my contact information and didn’t get his, except to learn he lived two blocks away. He was still a teacher, and on his way to meet his wife and child.

Bob looks exactly like he did ten years ago.

I used to equate New York with Bob. Brooklyn, in particular, Brooklyn Heights specifically. He was the first of our friends to move there, and John went to see him whenever he could. On Sunday as we drove to Fuh’s place, I never thought, “that’s where Bob lives.” I’d forgotten him.

I lost touch with all of John’s friends not long after he died. The last time I saw them together was New Years 1996. The time before that was John’s funeral, when six of them made the trip to Arkansas to say goodbye to him.

The New Years celebration was planned before John’s death, and he was looking forward to it. I felt I needed to attend, for him, even though I didn’t particularly want to.

I did not make the gathering merry. Had I not been there, John would have been missed, but I think his friends would have enjoyed each other’s company and had some fun, not focused on him the entire night. Without me around, they could pretend their friend was just absent, not dead. Instead, I was a constant reminder of what they had lost.

There was no escaping John’s death for me. For them there was, or at least there could be, but not with me sitting in their midst. While they always welcomed me warmly and supported me in any way they could, I hated being a vestige, a painful presence that made people cry. I liked them all very much, but they were John’s friends, not mine. I lost them when I lost him.

In a similar way, the friends we went to see in New York last weekend are Bump’s friends. While I never feel like an outsider and I adore them, I realize their primary connection is to Bump.

That parallel struck me as we walked away, and I glimpsed a life in a different present. I saw a trip to New York to see a different set of friends. I was two blocks away, leaving Bob’s house in the rain instead of Fuh’s. John had not died; I had a different son on my hip. A different child in my belly.

It was chilling.

I like my life and I’m happy with it. The path I took to get here had some hardships, but those events have made me who I am today. If I had the option, now, of avoiding certain horrible things, would I take it? What if it meant I became a different person? What if it meant losing what I have and love?

All this is silly, of course. I can’t make a choice and change the past, resurrect someone and fill the space of the last ten years.

But the idea that my current life could be very different if not for a single event (if the passing of a loved one can be considered a single event) makes me cherish what surrounds me today.

A chance meeting. An untimely death. Gratitude for what is mine.