It was a slow day at work on Tuesday, January 9th, 2006. By “slow” I mean I had nothing to do. I had stuck every pencil I had in the ceiling, chained all of my paperclips together, wadded all of my rubberbands into a ball and discovered that playing “I Spy With My Little Eye” by yourself isn’t entertaining, it’s just plain stupid.

So as I tried to think of new “projects” and continued to hope that management’s promise of things picking up at the end of the month would be fulfilled, I began to do a little work on my comic book script. I felt like the plot and dialog were beginning to flow quite nicely. No masterpiece, this, but I felt I was learning something, having fun and doing what I was born to do. It was a good feeling, as I hadn’t done any serious fiction writing in about a decade. Recently, through the help of my loving girlfriend, Jeannie Steven, and my wonderful friends, I had slowly come to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be truly happy until I pursued what I had always known to be my dearest dream: to create my own comic book. As I wrote the first chapter in the story of my super-powered hero, the Bluestreak, it occurred to me that I was simultaneously writing the first chapter of a new beginning in my life as well.

After a while, though, I needed a short break and decided to entertain myself by doing a Google search for a woman I with whom I hadn’t spoken in a decade. She had been my friend, but I wanted more from our relationship and was rejected. She, like me, was both a writer and an artist, and for all that I resented her rejection at the time I had always envied her talents. On this day, however, I was sure I was the better writer and wanted to find something she had written so I could sneer at it. I knew she had continued writing and illustrating over the years. I had heard she had written at least one novel, although I didn’t find it in my Web search. Well, how good could it be if I couldn’t find mention of it anywhere on the World Wide Web, eh? In fact, I couldn’t find much about anything she’d written.

Instead, I found her obituary. She had died of breast cancer in August of 2005.

Prior to reading her obituary, if someone had asked me about her I would’ve said she was no one, really. Someone I knew when I was younger. Just a blip on my radar screen. If that were true, then why did I feel a sledgehammer blow to the gut when I stumbled on her obituary? Why did I sit in front of my computer screen in stunned silence for several minutes? The answer, of course, was simple: for better or worse she was far more to me than a “blip.” I just hadn’t admitted it to myself in a very long time.She and I met when I was 23. This wasn’t the best period of my life. I was only working part-time at a job I loathed, I was still living with my parents, my love-life was a shambles, and I had no love of life. In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue living.She and I were both enrolled in a writing class at a non-profit organization in Rochester called Writers & Books. My ability to write was one of the few things I had any confidence in during those days, and I had hoped that I might be able to find a place where I actually belonged.On the first day of class she caught my eye immediately. She was a thin wisp of a woman, and pale, with long, straight blond hair, and she never wore makeup. But she had a smile that was beyond infectious, at once innocently joyful and mischievous. Her eyes hinted at a keen, creative and off-beat mind. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, gentle and unassuming and yet she was a presence that filled the room and almost inadvertently commanded respect. She wrote beautiful prose; lyrical, at once real and surreal, evocative. Bravado aside, I continue to wonder if my talent will ever come close to matching hers.

It took me a couple of classes before I had the courage to talk with her. The first time we spoke, I didn’t say much and neither did she. At first, I thought her reaction to me was one of arrogant indifference, and to me it made sense: how could this gifted woman possibly have the time of day for me? Later I learned it wasn’t indifference at all; she, like me, was at home while speaking to groups but painfully shy when talking one-on-one. I learned that because I took a chance after my first attempt at approaching her and looked her up in the phone book. I called her to ask her out for lunch. I was so prepared to hear the word “no” that I almost didn’t know how to react when she said “yes.”

By the end of our lunch date it was as though we’d been lifelong friends. She was like me: an artist, troubled, struggling to make sense of her own life. Before long she knew everything about me and rather than turning away, she understood and accepted me completely and offered me her friendship. When I felt worthless she held my hand and reminded me of everything she liked and admired about me. When I was lonely she’d take me out to Borders Books & Music and we’d get hot chocolate and dessert, read each other’s writing, browse the aisles, laugh about things only we understood, and create a two-person clique as only two consummate outsiders could. Every time another woman broke my heart (seems like all I was doing in those days was getting my heart broken, like I didn’t have anything better to do) she picked me up off of the broken glass of my feelings and helped patch up all of the cuts.

Before long I fell in love with her. She was the second true love of my life (Jeannie being my third and truest love — four-and-half-years and no end in sight, thanks for asking), but she wanted to remain friends.

I remembered having trouble wrapping my mind around that one. She had told me she was attracted to me and “adored” me and unlike some of her other suitors I respected her boundaries. And yet she consistently passed me by for men who she complained were lacking in the very qualities she found in me. And what tumultuous relationships she had! Shortly after I met her she married a man she’d only known for a month or two. Just a few months after that she accidentally got pregnant, nearly died as a result of complications, aborted the child and ended her marriage with bitterness and rancor. I suppose I should be grateful things never worked out for her and I in the romance department!

I continued to try to be friends with her — I hadn’t yet learned that unrequited love and friendship mix about as well as liberals and conservatives do these days — and things ended badly. We had a final phone conversation and I got the last snarky little words in. I think I was almost 25, and at that time I considered getting in the last word to be an impressive moral victory. That was 10 years ago.

In the years since we last spoke, the troubled artist that I was gave way to a responsible, stable person who put in a hard day’s work at the office, maintained a home and a committed relationship and tried to plan for the future. I thought I was comfortable with that. Yet in remembering my departed friend I’ve been reminded of the things I felt and the aspirations I had back when she and I were so close. I’ve discovered that the crazy artist in me never went away. I’ve discovered that I need him as much as I need my heart or my lungs. Just as my departed friend affected me so deeply in life, so has she done in death.

My last words to her were mean-spirited, as were my recent thoughts about her. Yet I find myself unable to distill this experience into some kind of easily quotable bromide about how we should be nice to the living because we don’t know when they’ll be taken from us. In fact, the more time I have to let my sadness sink in the more I’ve begun to realize that sometimes life’s experiences don’t provide us with easily understood lessons, much as we’d like them to. Sometimes things just are what they are and you feel what you feel. Even as I now grieve for her I find myself still believing it was best for both of us that we parted ways. Best that we never spoke to each other again.

Still, I hope she was happy during the past ten years. I hope she found true love as I have, that she had good friends, that she liked the jobs she held and that she was fulfilled. I’d say that I hope she didn’t suffer, but knowing what I know about cancer I believe that would be a vain hope. Instead I hope she suffered as little as possible. I hope she found in the last 10 years of her life the peace that always eluded her when I knew her. If not, I hope she’s found that peace wherever her soul rests today.

Goodbye, dear friend.