Childhood Dies

I wasn’t invited to my childhood best friend’s funeral.

I hadn’t seen him for 20 years.

From preschool through high school, we were best friends. Not “BFF”s. Not “He’s my closest friend”. We were Best Friends. In the truest sense of the word. We shared everything. He lived 4 houses away. Every day, every summer, every hour together.

We played on bikes, with Micronauts, we saw each Star Wars movie in the theater together. We played old fantasy boardgames — when it was all black and white art. We played our Atari 2600s. We played D&D. We showed off for girls together. We called them crazy together. We laughed. Our summers back then with bikes through lawn sprinklers, shooting toy ray guns and telling elaborate lies were longer than decades are now. Snowball fights in winter would stretch late into darkness, and although we never saw an aurora, we felt them.

We went to the local burger shop with my now wife.

We were inseparable.

Then some things changed. College. He got a job at the beach. Something turned him bitter. Difficult. The wrong people. He began using drugs. We drifted. Naturally, not forced. Saw him less and less. Soon, just funerals and weddings.

He worked in the city. Moved away. Sold pretzels.