We lost Sarah a couple of years ago today. But the last time I communicated with her personally was three years ago today. She was asking for my address to invite me to her upcoming wedding. The fact that we didn’t talk in that intervening year is one of my greatest regrets.
I got to know Sarah in college. We were in a music theory class that became close, and associated for years afterwards known simply as “Gusto.” From there she became a very dear friend. A spring break trip with me and my then-girlfriend Briana to nearby Nashville, IN. A late night where she told me all about her troubling problems with a man. A weekend where just Sarah and I headed out to the country, playing paddleball by a riverside, where I was escaping my life for just a little while, though I don’t think Sarah knew it.
When we both moved to the New York area for graduate school we stayed close, she being one of my only friends in the area. When I came into the city, we would inevitably meet and adventure together. Lulu at the Met. Watching turtles from the castle in central park. A trip to Brooklyn where she first met her future husband. And she was my confidante. I told her all about my problems with women and my degree program, and she told me about her concerns with men and school. I even got to go on a double date with her and Richard, her eventual husband, just before I moved to South Africa.
So I can only chalk it up to an astounding lack of character that I didn’t keep in better touch with her after that. We wrote for a while, but grew distant over the intervening years, talking less and less.
I saw the videos from her wedding and marveled at her beauty. How happy and, yes, still awkward she was. I wished I had been there, but I was living thousands of miles away and couldn’t afford to come. It was only a few months later that I heard she was sick, after I had moved back to the US. If I had been a better friend, I might have gotten on a plane to go see her. But I was scared and weak and I didn’t go.
When she let everyone know she was going into hospice care, I was too inexperienced to understand the depth of what that meant, and before I knew it she was gone.
By sheer coincidence I was in Indiana at the same time as one of her memorials. I got to meet her father and see her husband again. I heard her teacher David Effron speak about her amazing potential as a conductor. I got to weep with some of our other friends over our loss.
And I thought about how poor a friend I’d been. How I’d made it to her memorial but not to her wedding. How I hadn’t made time to visit her while she was sick.
I thought about Sarah every day for a long time after she died. Now sometimes I’ll miss a day, but the next I’ll remember and be all the more regretful for not thinking about her the day before.
Thank you Sarah, for being, at times, my best friend. And I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend to you.
I got to know Sarah in college. We were in a music theory class that became close, and associated for years afterwards known simply as “Gusto.” From there she became a very dear friend. A spring break trip with me and my then-girlfriend Briana to nearby Nashville, IN. A late night where she told me all about her troubling problems with a man. A weekend where just Sarah and I headed out to the country, playing paddleball by a riverside, where I was escaping my life for just a little while, though I don’t think Sarah knew it.
When we both moved to the New York area for graduate school we stayed close, she being one of my only friends in the area. When I came into the city, we would inevitably meet and adventure together. Lulu at the Met. Watching turtles from the castle in central park. A trip to Brooklyn where she first met her future husband. And she was my confidante. I told her all about my problems with women and my degree program, and she told me about her concerns with men and school. I even got to go on a double date with her and Richard, her eventual husband, just before I moved to South Africa.
So I can only chalk it up to an astounding lack of character that I didn’t keep in better touch with her after that. We wrote for a while, but grew distant over the intervening years, talking less and less.
I saw the videos from her wedding and marveled at her beauty. How happy and, yes, still awkward she was. I wished I had been there, but I was living thousands of miles away and couldn’t afford to come. It was only a few months later that I heard she was sick, after I had moved back to the US. If I had been a better friend, I might have gotten on a plane to go see her. But I was scared and weak and I didn’t go.
When she let everyone know she was going into hospice care, I was too inexperienced to understand the depth of what that meant, and before I knew it she was gone.
By sheer coincidence I was in Indiana at the same time as one of her memorials. I got to meet her father and see her husband again. I heard her teacher David Effron speak about her amazing potential as a conductor. I got to weep with some of our other friends over our loss.
And I thought about how poor a friend I’d been. How I’d made it to her memorial but not to her wedding. How I hadn’t made time to visit her while she was sick.
I thought about Sarah every day for a long time after she died. Now sometimes I’ll miss a day, but the next I’ll remember and be all the more regretful for not thinking about her the day before.
Thank you Sarah, for being, at times, my best friend. And I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend to you.
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