Nothing Lasts Forever

I don’t know exactly when I discovered I was lost, but I think it was somewhere in my freshman year of high school.

I came into the year thinking everything would be the same. My entire group of friends from middle school would hang out together, have a great time, and do everything together, just like before. It was that way until it wasn’t. 

We had close to no classes together. Some of my friends hung out with people from other middle schools. Others hung out with people from higher grades. I tried going with some of them, but I just didn’t fit in with their groups. Then I realized that we had all gone our separate ways, and everyone had other people to be with. Except for me. 

I remember walking out to lunch one day not knowing who to eat with, and that’s what hit me the hardest. I had never felt that feeling before. It was new, raw, and unwanted. I was stranded, in the middle of a vast ocean of loneliness, without a map telling me where to go. After grabbing lunch, I sulked dejectedly back to my fourth-period class, the music room. I took a chair and prepared to eat alone when I saw a group of my friends in the band on the other side of the room. I didn’t know it then, but that was my first sight of land. 

I spent time with them, talking and eating with them. We were all of different grades, and I was the youngest of them. But we all shared something in common, and I walked out of the music room with a smile on my face. And I came back day after day, becoming closer to them and having a better and better time hanging out with them. One of them suggested a “Friendsmas” Christmas party, and I readily, gratefully, and happily accepted the invite. Waiting for that party was like seeing a light in the distance, finally having something to steer towards and look forward to. 

That first weekend of Christmas break, I went out to play basketball in my driveway. It was my favorite pastime and something I hadn’t been able to do at all in the months before. I missed it greatly. After I had shot a couple of shots, I watched my dad come into the garage and pull his Kobe’s off the shelf. It had been an even longer time since he had played with me because of his injuries. I couldn’t believe it.

I stood in front of him in a guarding position, waiting for him to make his move. He turned his back to me, backing me down until he turned around into a fadeaway. I jumped at a desperate attempt at blocking it like I had done so many times before when I was younger. He had made that shot all those times, but this time I sent the ball straight back. We looked at each other and began to laugh, and I think it was at that point that I found myself back at home.

Shock

My brother and I laughed as my dad zoomed down the highway, windows down, wind whistling. We had just taken a road trip around Arizona, getting to see the impressive meteor crater and the Grand Canyon. There are no words to describe its magnificence and grandeur, and it was much too big for my ten-year-old brain to comprehend. Now it was time for the seven-hour drive back home the next morning. That trip was shaping up to be one of my favorite memories. Until it wasn’t.

I woke up. On the bed, groggy, the sun shining dimly behind the closed curtains on the hotel window. My brother lay next to me, still asleep. I was excited to finally go home, and I looked over at the other bed where my dad slept. He was sitting up and looking like he’d been awake for hours, fully dressed with everything packed. He was on the phone. On the phone just listening, as if waiting for something to come through. It was then that I felt a certain feeling, the one where you just know that something somewhere just isn’t right. 

I woke up my brother gently, while my dad remained motionless, rigid as a statue. Still on the phone. 

“Are you guys awake?” he asked.

“Yes,” my brother and I answered in unison.

“Then come here.” He patted the bed on either side of him.

When I sat down next to him, I saw the glistening sparkle of tears lining his eyes, falling down his face. Subtle, but very much real. Too real. 

“Do you guys remember how Uncle Matt has a heart problem?” he asked. I answered yes. My brother at six years old, too young to understand, sat silently. 

“He passed away this morning.” 

“What?”

“Uncle Matt is gone.”

Those four words rang in my head like bells, and it was then I started to cry. And then my dad, who looked like he’d been trying to keep composure, failed as well. My brother followed suit, and then nothing else in the world existed except for the three of us, with my dad’s arms around us, crying together on the bed. We had to get home, somehow, so after a forgotten amount of time, we left the hotel, all of us in silence, thinking of the same thing.