watercolor words of you

I have been thinking a lot about old friends this week. It started when I found a facebook page for my dear friend Erik Miller.

I have been trying to remember how Erik and I met. I can't remember if we worked together or if we met through mutual friends. In a way, it seems fitting that I can't find a clear beginning to our friendship. It isn't really important I guess. The most important thing is our friendship. Erik was easy to like - practically everybody who met him did. His generous heart and willingness to laugh a full gut wrenching laugh always pulled people in. And then there was his music. Always singing and playing guitar. Erik and I were great friends in a way that I find nearly impossible to describe here. We cared so much for one another that we talked several times about dating but just couldn't ever work out the timing - one or the other of us always dating someone else when the other was finally single. But looking back, I don't think we were really meant for that.

We had some amazing times together. He is directly responsible for a number of instances where I had to drag myself away from the fun just in time to go home and change and head to work. We had late nights at friends houses singing every single song we ever knew and lazing in the hammock. He introduced me to Tom Waits. He encouraged my writing. He encouraged me.

I had lunch with Erik just a day or two before I left Indiana for Phoenix. He had to fight a little with his girlfriend about it (she didn't like me - too jealous of our friendship to relax in his obvious affection for her) but he came because as he said, we had been friends for too long and were too close not to say good bye. And it turns out, it was good bye. I lost track of Erik. The only email and phone numbers I had for him stopped working and I was too busy making a life for myself in my new city to ask mutual friends to reconnect us. Until one day, months ago, one of them did. My friend Jamie called me to tell me that Erik had been killed in a car accident on Christmas Eve.

It seems odd to miss him this much. We hadn't talked in years. Even before I left Lafayette, we were spending less and less time together - pulled in by more and more adult responsibilities. And yet, I miss him. Reading this facebook page, put up as a memorial to him, I am reminded of who he was and I am overwhelmed by how much I miss him. I was trying to pin point a memory. Tried finding a photo of him or of the two of us together. And while I have hazy memories that feel very real, beautiful mental pictures of our friendship, I am unable to clearly pin point a favorite memory. And there are no photos. It makes me sad to think that there is no physical evidence of this great friendship I shared with this special person.

I hate having my picture taken. I avoid it as often as I can. And yet because of that, I have few pictures of me with any of the people I cherish most in my life. As much as I hate seeing myself in photos, I would rather that then this empty handed memory.