The day I heard that Kyle died was the same day that I found my grandmother’s cross. One of those lost-heirloom headaches I’d suffered for several years, finally giving up on the thing altogether and trying never to think of it, to avoid the guilt and the feeling of complete idiocy for having misplaced it. Turns out, it wasn’t really misplaced – It was simply in the corner of a front pouch in a bag I’d been carrying around with me from country to country for years. Also within that bag – a little medicine bag my mother had made, and my lucky golden elephant, given me one day by a generous African peddler in Italy.
It was like I had been carrying my good luck charms with me unknowingly for these last years. The coincidence of finding these keepsakes on the day I learned of Kyle’s death is something I will never forget. Kyle shared a birthday with my grandmother, with whom I was extremely close, who passed away in 2008. And although I don’t literally believe (or do I?) that my grandmother sent me this sign, I do believe that somewhere in the simultaneity of last Sunday there was a lesson or two.
Lesson 1: The universe is mysterious. Yeah, it seems obvious, but so many people are either unwilling to give over to the unknown, let alone greet that mystery with open arms.
Lesson 2: Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Obvious? Sure, sometimes. I’m thinking specifically about the way that these little superstitious items were with me on so many adventures and in so many closets, always close by, but in a way forgotten because their loss was too profound to fathom.
It makes me think about Kyle, this persona, this magnetic soul. He was, and continues to be, a person with so much life within him that it is still almost impossible to think him gone. But that’s it: he isn’t gone. He’s in the pocket of your favorite bag, he’s in that spot in the corner of your glove compartment that you never can seem to reach from the driver’s seat. You know what I mean: he is everywhere, because he touched the lives of everyone he met. It’s hard to think about having lost him, because you know he can never, ever be replaced; not by a longshot. So sometimes you’ve got to put it on the backburner when that emotion starts to well up, and his totally mirthful laugh ignites in your memory.
I can still feel Kyle coming over to me and slinging his arm around my shoulder like a big brother, smiling that winning smile and saying “Ça gaze?” in his Kyle-way. “Tu veux une bagarre!?” Then trying to mooch something off me, like a cigarette (usually a cigarette). God, he was a mooch. But as a good friend pointed out, you could just never stay mad about it. Oh, you could GET mad, but staying mad was another thing. One just couldn’t with Kyle. He was incredible like that. Incredible in that, if he had anything to give, he would gladly give it to you. No questions asked. Probably the shirt off his back, to be honest.
We’d been out of touch in the years since college, and of course it saddens me now, when a month ago I was hardly thinking of him, or anyone else really, that I went to college with (aside from the few people I actually stay in contact with). The truth is, I’m ashamed of how little I manage to write some of the people I love, to let them know that I love them.
People always say this when someone they care about dies: that now they will begin to write more letters or that now they will tell that girl they like that she’s pretty. Why are we waiting for these moments? What is it that we are waiting for, exactly?
Now go tell someone how important they are to you.
