Had Been. Would Have.

I'll admit: the sentimentality in the change of the seasons always gets to me. While transitions and visuals like last night's blood moon lunar eclipse don't necessarily point to any level of finality, I've been thinking a lot about death this week.

It shouldn't be too surprising that people die, let alone the elderly. Based on my own family tree, to live past 70 would be considered a blessing.

But I have been really reflecting on the legends that we share this planet with, both big and small. Sure Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Yayoi Kusama will get rich, layered retrospectives and be Instagram infographic-ed for time immemorial. Their cultural impact combined likely touched at least a billion people, including me — moved deeply by these icons who never once knew I existed.

Two people came to my mind this week who knew me completely —neither of whom received a coveted NYT obit, but both of whom I now speak of only in the past tense.

This past weekend, I was fortunate to participate as our family's representative in the ceremony for the scholarship in my grandfather's name. His death, sudden, a month before a birthday trip ending in a big zero, ricocheted through our family. He was the rock. I was the oldest grandchild, but I barely knew the man — I was only eleven when he died.

I can recall better the days after he passed, staying over at my best friend's house in their guest room (more often known as the computer room). I walked out of said room, in the chosen outfit for the funeral announcing with disdain that I looked like a stewardess. Stealing more than one program from the service that subsequently lived at the bottom of desk drawers in my parents' house until very recently.

Here's what I remember about him: his aviator glasses, his uniform of Oxford style button downs and khakis. The way he sneezed. His love of a vodka cran (and Bud Heavy). His tan Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer. Ice cream bowls with small spoons clinking in the sink.

I don't recall him ever raising his voice. His silent disapproval was far more effective. He taught me how to handicap horse racing before I could read.

Our last conversation plays out in my head very clearly. I was skirting child labor laws, dipping tubes into a vat of bleach to be prepped for cut flowers when he called Employee #003 to his office. It smelled like Oasis floral foam, Bic pens, and dated manila folders. I stood in the doorway as he gave me a brief lecture about the merits of hard work, discipline, and that I should be spending more time around the flower shop. Without meeting his eye, I gave him a quick, "Yes sir", scurried to his side to give him a kiss on the cheek and my dad took me home for the day.

He was a dependable, sound-minded sage, whose shoes my father hesitatingly stepped into when presented with the unfortunate opportunity.

I live now in the stories shared like lore, the anecdotes my brain allows me access to, and a legacy he was still building that I hold myself to. Because he was gone too soon.

Hardly anyone is ready for death. I say that with a sad smile before I get to tell you about my friend, Andrea.

The last time I spoke to him, Andrea knew it was coming. It was late 2018, and I was home in Connecticut between semesters of grad school abroad. He was doing another fundraiser. I donated, and said while I couldn't make the event, I told him I loved him and I'd see him soon. He died a few months later, at the ripe old age of 26.

Andrea wouldn't mind that joke for many reasons. For one, he remains the funniest person I have ever known. In 2006 as a birthday gift, he recorded a Tim & Eric-style sketch. I am so glad I had the foresight to upload it to YouTube so I can still hear him laugh. Second, the experimental treatments he was doing in his final years with cancer turned his skin a color he referred to as "spent banana."

Andrea and I met while we were still forming sentences. He was Italian by birth and by literally everything about him, too. We'd compare notes on our shared heritage and the darkness of our skin tones returning back to school every year — before I embraced my life of alabaster. Two days older than me, he was an older brother I never had, and together we faced the trials and tribulations of childhood and post-pubescence.

Our privileged upbringing didn't make for happy tweens, though. To summarize many an AIM away message, I was a sad girl that bad things happened to. No one handles that well, let alone children.

I joke often that one of my best assets is my ability to keep up with friendships. Bullying them at times, even. But with Andrea after he transferred to a private high school, we lost touch. I fought along the way, tooth and nail. Facebook Messenger still has the receipts — and while I don't know how they keep all these records, it's painful to read. One-off check-ins going without response until there was a reason to come back together.

Andrea was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer right around our eighteenth birthdays. We were both already set to head off to college: me to a mid-brow Jesuit university in the mid-Atlantic, and him to Brown (naturally). We kept up in college, and finally arranged to see each other again.

Sitting at the local hipster coffee shop, we caught up like nothing had changed. But then the moment shifted. My funny friend got serious. He told me how it had been weighing on him that he wasn't able to be the support I needed back then. He wanted me to know how sorry he was that I was going through it alone when I had given him so much. I was stunned. Atonement is a strange gift to receive — held and hardened over a decade from an old friend trying to make amends while he still could.

When he died after a nine-year battle, I felt stuck a continent away. So I scrolled through my contacts and reached out to everyone who knew him, even if it had been years since I had last spoken to them. I had to be a messenger to let other people be there for him even if I couldn't. A friend who managed to attend told me later that she'd never felt such a room full of love at a funeral.

I still have his number saved in my phone, still follow him on Instagram. His last post was a low-angle selfie in a hospital bed hooked up to all sorts of tubes. It's dated a few days before New Years, and the caption starts with "There's nothing more humbling than shittin' in a bedpan and getting cleaned up by several of the world's kindest nurses, and probably nothing that I feel more strongly about never wanting to have to do that again. But I'll have to, probably tomorrow [...]" ending in a pitch to promote his cause. In the end, he raised half a million dollars for cancer.

My grandfather and friend are two people who I now only process in "had been" and "would have."

Maybe it's the reason I fight so hard to stay in people's lives, I just don't notice that level of effort I'm giving until the tense changes.

Because naturally, a daughter of florists is always keen to give people their flowers while they're still here. And will do so after they're gone.

Not quite a non-sequitur for the outro, but I finished writing and I was left with the urge to end with of one of my favorite poems. I went to double check and confirm the line, realizing I was misremembering it — but I will share the incorrect recall anyway:

I love you. I'm glad you exist.

Thanks for reading.

Until soon,

Sarah