It’s a cliche of college life, but it was certainly true for me. There are those friends you make while pre-gaming with cheap mixers and even cheaper spirits. These are the people you waste precious moments with, creating inside jokes while walking to class or waiting in line at a drive through. You will have fuzzy arguments, wake up not remembering the details, and go get breakfast together at 1 p.m.
You might even find a kinship so special that you form a kazoo band for the sole purpose of annoying a hungover roommate (OK, maybe that’s just me and my friends).
In those years, friendship is about the immediate—tailgates, pool parties, and supporting each other through the inevitable heartbreak of boyfriends you didn’t approve of anyway.
Then, life happens. You drift away to seek employment and build families. You transition from attending weddings to liking posts of their kids’ first day of school. You assume the evolution of friendship is simply this slow stretching of distance, until you hit the looming life moments no one prepares you for: the moments when your parents pass on.
You assume the evolution of friendship is simply this slow stretching of distance, until you hit the looming life moments no one prepares you for: the moments when your parents pass on.
Earlier this year, my college friend Anna lost her mother. As I drove up I-85 from Atlanta to North Carolina for her mother’s celebration of life, memories of our younger selves came rushing back. We hadn’t seen each other as much since our kids have grown older, and I was saddened that this was the occasion bringing us back together. But I knew I had to be there, because I knew what it meant to need a “death shepherd.”
When my own father passed away in 2011, I was one of the first in our circle to lose a parent. I learned then that when you are drowning in grief, you cling to those with the unique wisdom of knowing what this feels like. These people don’t take the pain away; they just stand in it with you so you aren’t alone.
My cousin Kevin became a shepherd for me. His father, my Uncle Mike, had passed years earlier. He flew in for my dad’s service from San Francisco with sand dollars he’d gathered on a walk after hearing the news. He taught me to look for gifts from beyond. Many years later, my daughter Ruby died, and a few weeks after she passed, I found my own sand dollars washed up on an entirely different coast. Thank you, Kevin (and God), for sand dollars.
Photo by Jonathan Gagnon on Unsplash
His sister, my cousin Becky, told me the hardest truth: you just have to get through that first year of “firsts.” She also told me that her dad visited her in her dreams. And since then, I have dreamed of my dad many times, giving me the opportunity to “speak” to him since he passed. Becky was my shepherd reminding me of the grace of patience and time.
My friend Todd gave me the gift of knowing how to say goodbye with style. He delivered a eulogy full of humor and (gasp!) curse words in a church, showing me that death is too hard to process without laughter. He was my guide when I had to craft my father’s eulogy; I didn’t curse, but I did mention farting. I could only do it because Todd showed me how.
Standing in that receiving line for Anna, I realized that this is the most sacred evolution of those friendships started over kegs of cheap beer. We aren’t just the girls with the kazoos anymore; we are each other’s village. I couldn’t make it easier for her, but I could be her shepherd. I could remind her, just by standing there, that life is worth carrying on and her village will get her through.
I couldn’t make it easier for her, but I could be her shepherd. I could remind her, just by standing there, that life is worth carrying on and her village will get her through.
Seeing Anna with her husband and daughters, all of us crying together, felt profoundly unfair. This was my carefree and fun-loving friend, and she was bearing the weight of a world without her mother but also having to be strong for her daughters.
But I also felt incredibly lucky. There was so much love in the room. And the love I felt for her in that moment was built on the foundation of all those “wasted” college moments.
As Anne Lamott says, “One thing is certain. Love is our only hope. Love springs from new life. Love springs from death.” To my friend Anna, and to all of you just starting out: hold tight to each other. You are building a village of shepherds, and you’re going to need those shepherds later on.