Even photographs don't last forever

Yesterday almost right after I wrote that blog I got a very unexpected phone call.

My friend Steff from back home in New Jersey called and asked me what my ex-boyfriend Jeff's last name was, when I told her what it was, she told me he died.

This absolutely shocked me. I still can't believe that I will never see him again. Two summers ago we were rarely seen apart. I met him at work, we quickly became best friends, and discovered we had common friends.

It's hard to believe someone you knew so well can become someone you don't know at all, until suddenly they aren't there anymore. Jeff was a very troubled guy, who definitely got mixed up in the wrong kind of drugs. And the dirtiest of all the drugs took him from this world. I always tried to do the best I could to keep him out of trouble, that's why some of his good friends and his mother loved me.

But Jeff couldn't handle that, even back then I think he was beyond repair until an accident like this happened. The Jeff I knew he became would have probably expected this to happen, but looking at old photographs of him from then until now it's hard to imagine him ever developing into a disintegrating shell of a human being.

I went back into some of my old photobucket accounts to search for the photographs of him and I. But they were all gone. I must have deleted them out of there when we were having problems. And when I lost all the information on my computer, those photos went too.

It's amazing what I think I would give back, for one more minute with this person I lost so much contact with. And how I would be relieved just to see the photos of us on the screen, even though they are vivid in my mind. Being a photographer, I think the documentation part of photography is part of why I became one, subconsciously. Somehow without thinking about it, I participate in photography to capture moments that I am afraid of losing. Probably because I have lost much, and I believe it to be a tangible way to hold onto things you can't hold onto.

Even photographs disappear. I cannot hold onto things and not live my life. I cannot just document it, and hope that it can live through that. I cannot snapshot and avoid situations. I can't let another day go by without loving fully, and making sure people that I love know that. Whether it is returned or not. I cannot lose another friend while they are here living and breathing.

I am so afraid of just skimming the surface, just existing. But that is all I am allowing myself to do. By attempting to hold onto things, I am holding myself back from life.

Jeff, I cannot say that I knew you so well, or for so long. Because I would be lying. But I can say, in the time that I knew you, I cared for you very much, and their was a moment in time when you were my confidant, my best friend. You were my work buddy, we made an awesome dish duo and had fun slacking off until they put us on seperate shifts. I am sorry that I let so much time go without speaking to you. It's amazing to think that I will never see your face again, when I am so used to it reintroducing itself when I least expected it. I hope you are in a better place, and that you are living your life up there. I will fondly remember you serving me at BK and spilling iced tea all over the floor, until and old man told you to clean it up or he would break his hip. And when we mopped the floor together, met in the hallway and you kissed me. I have much love for you, rest in peace.