One of my best friends died last month, and his death has left a hole in my heart. And while the hole will heal, the remaining scar will always ache. Like all testimonials about love, friendship and loss, it’s hard to know what to share and where to start, so I’ll just start at the beginning and share what's in my heart.
Before I arrived at Stanford, I’d attended almost a dozen schools, lived in three states and in twice as a many towns and cities. As consequence of this peripatetic childhold, I’d never had a best friend with whom I could share clothes, secrets and personal milestones. I arrived at Stanford as a reserved and introspective only child, and I probably seemed aloof to more than a few classmates. This is why the last person anyone—myself included—would have expected me to befriend was a gregarious, extroverted, Memphis-born and raised, youngest son, but he was blocking the dorm back door while I was moving in and insisted on introductions before letting me pass. Despite his cheekiness, I let "Magnus from Memphis" rope me into a long foot trek to the Stanford Mall (we later discovered that the shuttle we'd seen stopping in front of our dorm also stopped across the street from the mall), during which we swapped and bonded over life stories—with his including such embellishments as an overly-protective family and a false birth date. By the end of my first day as a college student, I had a best friend.
Even though we were as different as Memphis sweet tea and New Orleans café au lait, we were inseparable. I was the “Ethel” to his “Lucy” and he was the yin to my yang. He was the social lodestar who forced me to pull my head out my books long enough to go to parties and Friday chill-outs, and I was his crisis manager and sounding board—and with Magnus, a bad haircut had to be treated with the gravity of a personal tragedy.
Despite the decades since our first meeting and the miles between us, he could still talk me into madcap mischief, and I could still convince him that what seemed like major drama was really just a minor episode. This is why, when he became discouraged while trying to buy his townhouse, I was able to talk him out of walking away from the table and through a successful price negotiation. And this is why he could convince me to go dancing with a broken foot.
One of the last times that I saw Magnus, I was on a business trip during which I fell in the middle of a meeting and, unbeknownst to me, broke a small bone in my foot. Because we rarely saw each other, Magnus insisted that we have a nice meal and go dancing while I was in town. When I pointed to my swollen foot, he replied “Guurl, just tape it up real good." After doing exactly that and grabbing something to eat, we went to one of his favorite clubs and danced until the music stopped and the lights came on.
It's hard to understand how one friendship can shape and change someone's life. While I'll never know how our friendship shaped and changed him, I know how it shaped and changed me. Even though he wasn’t the clothes-swapping, secret-sharing best friend I'd wished for while growing up (although his ability to fool me about his actual birth date—for over 30 years—suggests that he probably kept all the secrets I shared with him), Magnus was definitely the grown-up best friend I needed. Through our friendship, he taught me how to weave the dry straw of an existence into a golden life, and how to dance through whatever pain it brings. So whenever I think about him, I'm going to put some tape on my heart and just dance.
No comments:
Post a Comment