I can still feel the cold in my hands, still feel the frost as it flaked off beneath my fingernails when I scraped the inside of the windscreen. I can still hear the old Subaru shudder then start, still feel the frozen air blow through the vents before the engine had time to heat it. If I turn my head now, with eyes shut and this memory filling my mind, I can almost make him out, almost see his breath rise in the pre-dawn light. I can hear, if I try hard enough, a song from that busted old stereo float across the still waters of my memory. My mouth moves with the lyrics it knows by heart.
We were instantly best friends, Sven and I. We met each other and just somehow knew we were supposed to be that way. He was an exchange student from Sweden living with my oldest friend, McKenzie, and we met at the tail end of Summer. Those fleeting days of golden hour light when August tips itself into September, the days that orange saturates your reminiscence of.
I drove him to school every day, we were on the same schedules, and one of the very first things we bonded over was a love of old, vintage U2. Somehow, in a catalog of so many popular songs, he and I loved a random track 5 the most. We listened to Running to Stand Still more times than I could possibly count, playing it on repeat every morning. We’d sing the “la la la la de days” and try our best to hit the high and haunting howls.
Eighteen years later, I finally found my way to a U2 concert in New Jersey. It was the Joshua Tree Tour, my favorite album played live, and we had to park half a mile away to avoid getting stuck after the show. I cried my way through half of it, and then when “our” song finally came on, I opened my phone while Sarah recorded bits of it for me, and I sent Sven a message.
“I am listening to our song,” I said, “and I wish you were here with me. I miss you so much. I love you.” I sent a clip of Bono singing with it. I didn’t know it at the time—we never know it at the time—but those last three words would be the final words I ever got to say to him.
Sven died in the restroom of a Stockholm restaurant, and we never really found out what truly happened. Probably a heart attack, they thought, maybe a brain aneurysm. I don’t know if I’ll ever know what actually happened, but he’s gone, and it hurts, and I miss him every day.
“I love you,” the last words I never knew then would be last, but will never forget.
Life is lasts, and as this is a Part 2 on my brief exploration of them, there are so many instances of them that we are completely unaware of at the time, but still they stand tall in our memories. They are the ones that come as surprise, the ones that silently elude us and forget to announce their departure. They are the Irish Goodbye from our closest friends—we don’t see them leave, but my goodness do we remember their absence.
Jonas is this, Jonas was always this.
Jonas and I met when I was only 3 or 4 years old, though we stayed close for almost two decades after that. As next-door neighbors when my family moved back to Montana from the South, he was one of three “older kids” who lived next door and were the epitome of cool my entire childhood and adolescence. Somehow, despite their cool, they still walked us to school on our first days, despite being years older. Jonas was an amazing chef, fantastic baker, and had this beautiful spirit that enveloped everyone he met. Jonas was a hero to a young me. He’s a hero still.
I remember the last time I saw him. 10 days from my older sister’s wedding, I ran into Jonas in downtown Missoula, Montana pushing his Coney Island Hot Dog cart outside of the Missoula County government building. Jonas was a magnetic smile and an easy grace that cannot be faked, Jonas was kindness, was all-ears even to those that are too much mouth. I remember talking to him about Rian’s wedding, I remember telling him I’d see him on the dance floor. I remember asking him, “You’ll be there, right?!” “Of course,” he said, “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
I got the phone call a few days later that he’d taken his own life. In my own disbelief, I said there had to be some mistake. I’d just seen him, I said, he promised, I said.
Sometimes, the world is just a bit too much.
Life is lasts, and these too sting. They all sting, even when not decorated with death’s dark colors. They all hurt, they burrow beneath the skin, they ache in the slow quiet months of Winter when the weather shifts and all things grow dark. Some, leave scars.
These are the scars we look at at remember the surprise of their infliction. We remember not knowing then, that they’d be a last at all. These are the final hugs we give out, never knowing they will be final. These are the Christmas mornings that once carried such magic and mystery, the sprint up the stairs of our childhood homes and the glance back that highlights the very last time it all felt that way. This is the glow we cannot ever quite reproduce, but still we try.
Can you remember your lasts that didn’t announce themselves as such? The final hugs, the days that something stopped, something shifted, and what was, never was again.
Perhaps, as I asked last week, perhaps these lasts are the hardest? Maybe the most heartbreaking lasts are those we don’t recognize at the time? Maybe it’s the regret that comes when we discover later all we did not do, all we did not say, all we did not offer or change or adopt or accept. Maybe. Maybe they are all hard, maybe they all add up to the suffering Buddhism speaks so long about, that we meditate to try to come to peace with. Maybe.
As with last week, I’d love a conversation to begin. I’d love a dialogue with all of you. I’d love your thoughts, your insights, I’d love to know the following, once more:
If you could go back to a last that you didn’t know would be one, what would you do differently?
What if we treated all things as though they could be lasts? What would change?
What seemingly random or ordinary events do you now see was a goodbye?
I’d love your input, I’d love to create a forum on lasts, to discover how they change us, how they shape us into who we are, who we will be. Please, if you’re able, leave a comment.
Next week we’ll go over the final kind of lasts in Part 3. I hope you’ll be here for it, I hope you’ll share.
Here’s to the lasts. The ones we see coming, the ones we don’t, but still remember, and the third, all those that fade completely.
I’ll see you next week.
We won’t know it then
but they’ll never be again.
These are those we miss.
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