The Potential Energy of What Could Have Been

I’m a sucker for ceremony.

I know, it surprises me too. I’m the kid who almost got suspended in high school for holding up sarcastic signs during a pep rally; I don’t seem like the type to cry over Pomp and Circumstance. Alas, give me heartfelt speeches and slideshows of memories and I will show you what it looks like to stoically attempt to pull back tears before they spill over.  When my sister graduated from UNC, I cried during an a cappella version of Carolina in My Mind.

Yet, I remember almost none of my high school graduation.

20 years ago today, I waited in the hallways of New Bern High School as our loved ones gathered in the stadium. We clutched our see-through bags as we were reminded of the sacred rules of graduation; this is a serious event and we mustn’t have fun.

I like ceremony, but I hate artificially serious events. Add this to the ways in which I make absolutely no sense. I think, mostly, I like revisiting memories. My sense of nostalgia is acute.

The night of graduation, someone forgot to reset the timer for the football field sprinklers, and they came on just before the start of the ceremony. The administrators grabbed towels to dry each chair before we walked out. Then, just as they finished, the sprinklers came on again, this time ushering in a flock of geese to soak up the tiny rain storm. It felt like the perfect fuck you statement — the universe demanding we not take ourselves too seriously. I wasn’t even witness to this, yet it’s still my favorite “memory” from that day.

The class of 1999 exists in the neverworld between GenX and Millennial. We are neither digital natives nor digital immigrants, entering adulthood in the space that straddles both analog and cyber. We got our driver’s licenses at the dawn of personal cellular but still carried a quarter for the pay phone. We did not have GPS but we did have MapQuest. Likewise, we lacked digital cameras but could, with some difficulty, obtain access to a scanner. During my tenure writing for my college newspaper I was sent to a small conference room inside the library to watch and report on a presentation about this new thing called, “Google.”

These days, I use my cell phone to take digital photos of those old printed photos which I then upload to Google Photos.

As I sit on my floor in front of a large plastic bin containing thousands of loose photographs, I think it’s lucky cameras went digital when they did. I want to document, document, document and have a nearly pathological distrust of my memory, coupled with a burning desire to remember. Translation? I take a lot of photos. If life was still film and paper I would have needed a bigger uhaul for my recent move. Still, there is something about the tactile process of sorting photos. The smell of chemicals. It’s the visual edition of the Kindle vs hard copy conundrum.

That night in May of 1999 we had no idea the ways we would be able to reconnect with each other as adults. Between the overdone jokes and U R 2 COOLs in the blank pages of our yearbooks are notes reminding us that someone was hoping we would have a good life. We had tunnel vision of the future and the youthful ability to take everything for granted. To be fair to myself, I really didn’t like most people anyhow. Everything is too black and white when you’re 18.

As we graduated from college, social media started to spread like wildfire across the digital landscape. Welcome, Web 2.0. The same thing that makes my mass communication degree sort of useless has given me insight into the lives of the people from my past and my present. I am forever thankful for the ability to bear virtual witness to your weddings, babies, divorces, struggles, and accomplishments. I have mourned your losses, and in far too many cases, your loss.

Recently, I have been musing the intersection of potential with expectation, cynicism, and hope.

This time last year was the darkest of my life. The thing that kept me going was not hope. Hope had become this ephemeral glimmer of a dubious memory. What kept me going was potential. If hope is the thing with feathers that perches on the soul, then potential is the absence of talons. Long after hope flies away, potential remains, neither cynical nor optimistic. It is the agnosticism of the unknown future.

Grief is a lamentation as the final spark of potential burns out.

The analogy that recently came to mind is that of a Weeping Angel. For my non-Whovian friends, the Weeping Angels are an alien race that kill their victims by letting them live to death – they send them back in time and while the victim is living out their life in the past, the angels feed on the energy of what could have been. They feed on the energy of potential. In some ways, they feel like a metaphor for grief — standing as silent monuments when you’re staring them down, but attacking the second you look away.

via GIPHY

This morning, I received news that one of my oldest friends, Angela, passed away in the pre-dawn hours.

It was neither sudden nor unexpected. Cancer.

A few weeks ago, a friend messaged me to let me know the end was near. Her cancer was terminal and we knew it was a matter of time, but seeing time closing in on itself left me wounded, and unsure if I was allowed to grieve the loss of a friend I had not seen in 20 years. That was when I first pulled out my bin of photos, cards, band stickers, and playlists – a polypropylene time capsule of Rhiannon until 2002.

I was looking for pictures of Angela. I wanted proof of the memories that felt like they were on the tip of my tongue. I swear I can almost see a photo — she’s wearing a solid-color t-shirt with her blonde hair hanging loose — my feeling is that it was early high school. But, the actual pictures must be in Schrödinger’s box, because they’re certainly not in mine. Our friend Laura mentioned her cackle and the way she scrunched her nose. I can almost remember that. I remember riding bikes to the YMCA to swim on her guest pass. I remember roller skating. Mostly, I remember her being part of my landscape — never my best friend, but a solid and reliable friend since Kindergarten. A genuinely fantastic human being who was nice to everyone but never fake. I can remember the phone number of the line that I used to talk to her and make plans, but I cannot remember the details of what we did. I am having trouble differentiating which Angela is which in many of my yearbook signatures. Memory is a bitch, sometimes.

In a world free of cancer, was I ever going to see Angela again? In a fair world, maybe or maybe not, but there was always the possibility. I could hold onto the vague notion that I would someday meet up with her, or anybody else from my past, either by accident or intention. I could call her up the next time I found myself in Wilmington. Would I? Probably not. But I could.

Now? Now I cannot. This morning, that possibility was cut short because the world is not fair.

Rest in peace Angela. You’ve been part of my life for more than 30 years. I think there should have been 30 more years of potential, even if we never cashed it in.