The Long Walk Home

I was 13 years old when Sean and his family moved away. That was in 1975, more than thirty years ago now. They were moving to a place far away, a place I’d never heard of at the time. It’s funny; I have a memory of the incident being unremarkable, though I feel now that it must have been at least a little traumatic for me. I mean, how can you watch one of your best friends—one you’ve spent the past six years with—so nonchalantly disappear out of your life forever and not be affected by that?

I stood there for a while and watched as they drove away. After they turned onto Joy Road, heading west, I just stared, realizing that I would never see them again. Six years of close friendship now gone in an instant, never to return. I looked at the house they used to live in—a home where childlike exuberance rang through the halls, a home that had become a second home to me—and felt the pangs of abandonment. Six years of climbing trees, drawing comics, watching monster movies, acting goofy and making each other laugh—all gone. A sigh that was nearly a moan escaped me. I wasn’t sure what to feel, so I just felt empty.

It’s sad like that sometimes, how friends disappear during the span of a lifetime. One minute you’re hopping fences and sharing mischievous adventures together, and the next there’s this big hole in your life where your friends used to be. Looking back, I can’t help but puzzle over how these people so inconspicuously snuck out of my life. Where did our roads diverge? How did we become so separated from each other? I often think about friends I had growing up; I’ve never had friends like that in my life since. And I wonder why it has to be that way.

Normally it only took me five minutes to walk home from Sean’s house, since I lived right around the block. I’d been to Sean’s house hundreds of times—it was my home away from home—and the walk was always the same. The day Sean’s family moved away, everything changed. I was only 13, and Sean had been my best friend for six years—a long time when you’re a kid. Now he was leaving forever. I was there when they packed their last few boxes and cases and bags into their car and drove off. The final goodbyes still ring in my ears to this day. I had to live with the realization then that I would never see Sean again, and that this would be the last time I ever walked back home from Sean’s house.

It was a long walk home.