04 Jan 2015

My Most Important Lesson in 2014

It hasn’t been a year since Sam has passed away, but we’re nearing his birthday and he would have been 25 this year. He would’ve done 25 amazingly. In recent weeks, thoughts of Sam have come up a lot more and even more vividly than I would have imagined. Grief is something that I never experienced fully until we lost Sam and I think that what I have learned the most in 2014 is that grief is ongoing. We all hope to mourn in the moment when something happens and while we think that that may just be it, that’s not usually the case. I know that I’m going to mourn for Sam at least twice a year – his birthday and the day that he left us – and addititionally more days after that.

When I thought of him the other day, I was taken back to a time of our heart-to-hearts except what would’ve been the future. In it, we have those lengthy conversations that my friends and I have presently.

Sam was the kind of friend that always wanted to make sure that his friends were happy without ever expecting too much back. He’d ask you all of the right questions, but never doubt any of your answers. He was a really good listener in that way.

In what I dreamed to be a future chat Sam asked:

“Are you happy? What about him makes you happy? Would he be friends with us? Has he met your family? And what did they think? Do you think you’ll ever move back to Seattle? Are you happy with the way your career has turned out so far?” I’d answer all of his questions and at the end he would laugh and say “Ok bud, as long as you are happy.”

I don’t always remember the dreams that I have, but I’ve been dreaming about this one for weeks. This is the type of catch-up conversation you’d have with most of your friends as you move forward through life. However, this is not a conversation that I will ever be able to have with Sam. What saddens me the most is that I’m not going to watch Sam become a loving husband or a phenomenal parent and we can’t ever routinely catch up in our lives like we should be. My hope is that somewhere Sam is living out the life that he always dreamed of and that he’ll be able to tell me about it again in my dreams one day.