Sad Parting

My friend K and his dog Floyd left for Florida this morning.

Getting him ready to go has left me physically and emotionally exhausted. The physical exhaustion is easy to explain - K is a packrat whose two-bedroom house was stuffed to the gills with stuff - both sacred and mundane. Although I've been working furiously for the past two months to help him sell, give away or toss his belongings, the past couple of days have been marathon work sessions.

Although K tried to help out as much as he could, his contribution was minimal - besides being blind and suffering from chronic, debilitating pain, he was nearly paralyzed by anxiety over the upcoming move.

My emotional fatigue is a bit more complicated. What started two years ago as an effort to help out a neighbor who seemed to have no one else has grown into one of my most valued friendships. K often jokes that we must have been married in another life, but given my track record with marriage, I don't think we'd be this close now if that were the case.

Our bond was so tight that we often sat for hours in K's patio - once a magical space filled with verdant green light, now ravaged by plant buyers seeking bargains - without saying much, content to sit and smoke and toss tennis balls for the dogs and enjoy each other's company.

Over the last couple of days, the realization that he was really leaving finally sunk in, and I've been in tears more often than not. Yesterday, as I finished hauling the last of K's 29 boxes to the local mailbox store for shipment, I looked so demented that the owner steered me to a chair and handed me a bottle of cold water, and his simple gesture of kindness brought on a new spate of tears.

When K and I said our weepy goodbyes, we promised to visit each other often, but the truth is that I'll probably never see K or Floyd again. It's another casualty in a year that has been marked by crippling loss - not just my marriage to Dear Husband and Bob's death, but also my plans for the future, my faith in others, and my sense of self.

Bon voyage, K. I miss you more than you'll ever know.