My Best Friend with Wings (sample chapters)

I. Travels

I just found out that my best friend passed away.

His name was Dave, and this story is for him.

I. Travels

According to the text message, he died last night. Here I am trapped at work, and I can’t grieve. The expectation is to remain composed, to dam up feeling, to turn on autopilot and absentmindedly perform tasks, to just get through the rest of this day. Try my hardest to not crumple to the floor right now, to not fucking cry. Wait until it’s appropriate.

It’s later that night, at home, when I finally release my emotional dissonance.

It’s been less than a year since I moved from the small hometown Dave and I shared, but the unfortunate truth is our lives had begun moving in separate directions long before then—our individual paths leading us down increasingly distant roads. Shortly before I moved, he paid me a visit. We talked and laughed as though nothing had ever changed—our conversation the brief phantom of times long gone. We kept in touch infrequently after I left town. He had shared with me his own plan to move, but a mere week away from taking a step that would have changed his life forever, he slipped into tragic permanence instead.

Seeking information, I call a mutual friend to exchange condolences. As fond memories of Dave are shared, my heart aches with loss. As knowledge regarding Dave’s passing is disclosed, my heart sinks with sadness. And as plans for the wake are described, the guilt drops my heart straight into my stomach. I’m attempting to pathetically explain how personal constraints will prevent a trip home for the service, when my friend tells me about a memorial concert planned for a later date—one I canmake. I take comfort in knowing I’ll be attending something that truly honors Dave’s memory. Given how we grew up, the environments in which we placed ourselves, and the events to which we gave priority, I have no doubt he’d prefer my presence at the concert.

A couple of weeks pass, and now I’m reflecting back on that thought as I sling my backpack, containing the few personal belongings I need for this trip, over my shoulder. My girlfriend gives me a parting kiss as I head out from the apartment we share. Glancing back, I see her standing in our doorway waving goodbye. Perhaps she should be coming with me, but if there’s one thing I feel sure of it’s that this is a journey I must travel alone.

○ ○ ○

The streets of my Boston neighborhood are always quiet this early, yet as I walk to the nearest subway station, I can’t help but perceive the lifelessness to be ominous. The world feels strange today—or maybe I feel strange, as if I have to forcibly focus on what’s in front of me or I’ll lose myself. There’s no in between. No gray area even though the world feels gray. Keep my focus.

My steady breaths billow as fog in the cold like a smoker’s exhale, and I reminisce on chilly, Pennsylvania mornings when Dave and I, warmed by the cherry glow of our cigarettes, stood fascinated by the dance of our smoke in the frigid, still air. I gave up the habit for good a few years ago, but this morning I’d gladly accept cancer if it meant getting one more smoke in with my friend.

Having arrived at the station, I board a waiting train and sink into a vacant seat. A chime sounds the doors closing, and the train carries me deeper into the city. I’m heading for a commuter terminal where I’ll be taking a charter bus from my new home—with a transfer in New York City—to the town I used to call such. Like anyone who’s ever been mired in small town drama and misery, I loathed growing up there; but since freeing myself, I’ve been able to enjoy my infrequent visits back. This time, however, I am returning for a reason, a matter of purpose hanging in the distance.

“It’s about to get cramped,” complains an indiscernible voice. Early morning travelers have been steadily filling the train at each stop, and now someone sits next to me, brushing uncomfortably close. Young professionals and university students jam-pack the car, and I’m pinned in my seat by the crowd. To take my mind off the congestion, I think of Dave and how he had such power of presence, possibly greater than anyone I’ve ever known. No one had a personal bubble in which he believed he was not welcomed to enter, and physical space seemed nonessential when he did.