hasta manana

Kathleen is poetic, so much more than I. She gives me far more credit for being literary than is my due. Case in point: As I left her house on this, the last time I will see her for a long time, the last time I will drive away from her beautiful house, I burst into tears and then started singing the aforementioned horrible, horrible Debby Boone song from the late ‘70s. “Hasta manana till we meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when …” So what I’ve long suspected is true: I’m a moron. Good to know.

I was crying so hard I nearly hit two cars parked on the road. Then I started laughing, thinking about how this ridiculous song from my childhood had resurfaced at such a strange time; and then I thought about how Kathleen’s car, parked on the street, had been demolished by a bus; and then I started crying again.

Life is like that, at least for me nowadays. Emotions have gotten the upper hand. Steve is gone to Denver, and apparently he drove off with my sense of reason in the trunk. When he called to tell me a mail truck had rolled in Denver and burst into flame, I thought of the care package – the one that hadn’t arrived yet, the one with his favorite coffee and instant apple cider and pictures from the girls – and, again, waterworks. Then he walked back to work to find it sitting on his desk; and then I started laughing. I was as surprised as anyone by my reaction.

I purposely didn’t say goodbye to Kathleen today. If I don’t say goodbye she can’t leave, right? I snookered her into going on what I billed as a “Mile High Apple” errand: helping me load boxes into Ramona and struggle with the baby stroller. We laughed. She cried. I offered her scratchy fast-food napkins from the glove box. We said many impolite words. We got drive-thru coffee. We had a lot of fun. And I will never, ever have that experience again, nor one like it. You can’t get drive-thru coffee in Brooklyn, probably; and I probably won’t have her around to help me load boxes whenever I leave Denver, and I won’t have Ramona, and I won’t have a baby still in a stroller. This day, these moments, will never return, and I am unutterably, crushingly sad.

And now I have a fresh set of anxieties. What will our friendship be like now? Kathleen will have new experiences, in a new job in a new city. She will move forward. And I will move forward too, but in a new city with different points of reference. Will we still be able to relate? Or, despite our best efforts and good intentions, will our friendship wither?

I have so many goodbyes ahead of me here, reminders of the bad chi that seems to have settled into my home city. I have to drive to a distant prison to break the news to an old friend who got himself into, shall we say, an unfortunate situation. I have a birthday sleepover planned with another dear friend whose husband committed suicide a few months ago. Both these friends, I know, will get better but never well; and I can’t believe I’m leaving them in their hours of need. I have to take the grandkids away from my mother, and my father, and my sister, and my grandparents. Nobody is particularly happy or excited for what lies ahead of us. What am I doing here?