From MARGINALIA: Life Happens On Tuesdays

Never Say Goodbye

I was listening to Bon Jovi's Never Say Goodbye the other day, attempting to sing along, when suddenly I couldn't anymore.

I really tried.

The words were right there. I knew every one of them. But I couldn't get them past the lump in my throat.

For a few minutes, I wasn't here anymore. I was back in a little bedroom in West Valley City with my cousin.

We had become close after I moved to Utah when I was 7. She was two years older than me, and as we grew up, we spent a lot of time together. Weekends, sleepovers, music, boys, trouble. Especially trouble.

Her parents weren't great with finances. Sometimes blankets hung over the windows instead of curtains. Sometimes the utilities hadn't been paid and the house was freezing. I remember taking cold showers there because there wasn't any hot water.

It didn't matter. I wanted to be there because she was there. And she was so cool!

There are things you tolerate easily when you're young because the thing you have in abundance is the thing you will someday discover was most precious. Time.

We had so much of it.

At least we thought we did.

A LITTLE MORE OF THE STORY

That memory sent me down a path I wasn't expecting, thinking about childhood friendships, sisters, motherhood, growing older, all the ordinary moments we never realized were happening for the last time.

I consider the way music holds pieces of our lives, waiting for us to return and discover how much we've changed.

I wrote about it  on my other blog, MARGINALIA,

It's about the goodbyes we never knew we were saying and learning to recognize the extraordinary things happening in our ordinary lives.

CONTINUE READING ON MARGINALIA

Life Happens On Tuesdays →

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