Andy

It's times like this you must recall / Your heart is a muscle ~Carly Rae Jepsen

Today would have been Andy's 40th birthday. It's been nearly a year since he died, and it's easy to forget, briefly, randomly, that he's gone. The Facebook memories pop up often, as nearly ten years of real-life and online friendship remain captured in posts, photos, and videos. There are birthday celebrations, game nights, and so, so, so many meals. You have memories with Andy from this very day some years ago, the app reminds me. What the app doesn't say, doesn't know, is I will never get to make another. 

I think of him often, sometimes when I least expect. The grief grabs hold suddenly, clenching the heart, but it's always replaced by a bittersweet joy, picturing his smile, his voice, his humor. I think about how I'd planned to visit his grave this August on a trip to Memphis. I think about all the trips I took back there and stayed with Andy, shared meals with him, said goodbye, always expecting to return and see him again.  

It's ironic that the last time I saw him alive wasn't even in Memphis. I feel lucky that I got to meet up with him last summer in Baltimore, just before he died, even though the freshness of that visit surely made processing his death more challenging. If I hadn't just seen him, happy and seemingly healthy, and instead, my last memory of being with him had been the more faded one from ten months before, I don't think I would have felt as incredulous when I heard the news. I don't think the wound would have felt as raw to me. After I got back to D.C. that day, Andy had messaged me. "Eeek!!! We didn't get a picture!!" It was the last message ever from him. It burns in my brain. "Next time!," I had responded.   

We had expected next time to be in Michigan, at Jill's wedding less than three months away. The plans had been made, house rented, travel booked. The rest of us made it there in September, staying in a place that reminded us of 1944 both in structure and sentiment. His absence weighed on us, even as we celebrated our reunion, our enduring friendship, and Jill's new chapter with a new member of the 1944 family. It was comforting to see the same faces I had last seen at Andy's funeral, this time for a much more joyous occasion. Yet it was almost hard to believe that life had gone on without him there and would continue to do so. 

We had a couple of group video calls today to celebrate his life and our friendships with him and each other. He really touched so many people in his short life. We toasted him from our homes across the country and joked about how he would have embraced quarantining and would have set about creating drinks for each day, including, of course, a purple drink.  

I noted that this morning, one of the first news stories I saw was that Carly Rae Jepsen had released a new album today. Today, a Thursday, when most records are released on Fridays these days! Today, the 40th anniversary of the birth of the person with whom I shared a deep love for her music! It was like a god wink, a sign from Andy, that he's singing along with us somewhere.  

Andy, you are very loved and very, very missed.