Don't Regret.

In college, I had a couple of friends who worked really hard at being a couple. Harder maybe than you’d think most people would have to work to be together, if they really wanted to. But it seemed they really did want to, and so they tried. And tried. And when they tired of trying, they decided to get married.

She was my good friend, and I agreed to wear an over-orchestrated, taffeta, seafoam-green dress while serving as her maid of honor. I remember sitting in my first apartment (the first I had on my own), tediously stitching tiny pearls to the edge of the tulle veil I made for her. As a thank you gift, she gave me this carved wooden box “to hold all the treasures that you’ll pick up along your travels in life.”

Inside: a card that she wrote with a note about our treasured friendship, a love poem from a boy whose love I didn’t return, their wedding announcement, and an assortment of photos and clippings.

All of us in attendance floated obediently through the machinations of their union, each in our minds knowing it was, of sorts, an ceremony to the forces of futility.

I stayed by her side (in spirit, as they moved several hours away) for the birth of both of their children, and, despite the irrationality of it (of me, in this role, I mean), I agreed to be godmother to their firstborn.

I visited when I could, but we spent much of our friendship over the phone in long, sometimes emotional conversations. And then, one conversation turned on us both and we argued. She hung up on me, or I her, and we didn’t speak again.

Over the years, I thought off an on about trying to get back in touch. It was a serious argument, but one I knew our friendship could weather. And I was pretty sure she felt the same way. But who knew where she was? I didn't know where to begin.

Then, in 2005, in possibly the most unfit way imaginable, I learned that my friend and her husband didn’t make it. That they’d split up many years earlier. And there was more: there, in the middle of the dance floor, with Prince bellowing something about a Kiss in my right ear, a mutual friend, whom I also hadn’t seen in years, leaned in to my left ear and whispered that she died. Just a couple of months ago, he said.

This is on my mind today as I wished her daughter a happy 18th Birthday and told her how proud her mom would have been of her.

I don’t need to explain the moral of this story. It’s really obvious, right? We know that we should cherish our friends and loved ones and never leave a misunderstanding mistaken, a disagreement in dispute, or a conflict in contention. But sometimes we still do. And that is really stupid. So don’t do it, OK?

This was also in the box. Hmmm...