Another Goodbye

A friend of mine got married yesterday. It was a beautiful wedding, small and elegant, and she looked gorgeous, happy and secure in her choice. At the end of the month, she will leave for Georgia, where her new husband has a house and a job waiting for him. When they met, he'd moved north to Connecticut and tried it out, for her sake, But her job didn't pan out, so they're going. I don't blame them. Georgia is less expensive to live in, they already have a home, and they will be right near Atlanta. I would go, too.

I'm sad. I didn't expect to be this sad at her leaving. I've only known her about a year, although I guess that doesn't matter in the great scheme of things. But she meshed into our lives well: She would come over for game night, drink beer, laugh, love our cats. She took the time to learn all their names, and cat-sit for them. She paid each of them attention, and they loved her. She brought Simpson Clue over, and we spent hours trying to beat her. She nearly always won. I'd never played Clue with anyone but my Dad when I was kid, before we met her. She lit sparklers with us on the 4th of July. She invited us to her wedding.

Connecticut isn't the friendliest place in the world. After three years, I can still count on one hand the real friends I've made here. Part of that is my fault, part of it isn't. But one of the only people I've really let into my life during a time when it's been hard for me to do so is leaving, and it's sad.

When I left a lot of people three years ago to come here, I didn't really think much about it. One of my friends tells me repeatedly that she would love to have me back. I didn't take her seriously. Now I wonder if she felt this way when I left.

I'm hoping our friend will find her way back to New England eventually. Although we won't be in Connecticut much longer, New England will still be our home, somewhere. And now we have a place to visit in Georgia. Best of all, like her sister said at the wedding, she followed her heart, and she made the right choice for her. We all have to do that, sometime in our lives.

I'll still miss her.