Changeless

Last night I took a glance at our apartment wall calendar to see what we had scheduled for the next week. There were only 2 things written on there for the entire month. One had just passed: June 12 – Kendrick’s birthday. The other arrives at the end of this week: June 18, which is designated on the calendar as the worst day of our lives.

Now to the average person, June 18 is just another day, in fact it will probably be better than a normal day because it is a Friday, and everybody is just working for the weekend. However, for us at apartment south seven, that is the day everything will fall apart.

June 18 marks the end of the spring term here at BYU. With its conclusion, over half of the people in my group of closest friends will leave Provo. Some will be back in just a matter of months, ready to rekindle our relationships with new stories and experiences, while others will remain only as cherished memories and the focus of an occasional wishful thought as they move on to perhaps bigger and better things. Our lives will become more quiet and less full as close knit ties will, in a sense, unravel. I take the following from a song (the title of the post) by Carbonleaf, a great band from Virginia that everyone should listen to, especially every song on their album Indian Summer:

Let fondness be our souvenir
To keep it warm it we’ll keep it near
Otherwise with no heart to recall
A memory’s just a memory after all

I feel blessed to have so many great people in my life. Sometimes life doesn’t make sense, but there always seems to be someone close to us that can make it a little bit clearer. And so, if I were a drinking man, I would raise my glass to friendship, and hope that it burns forever bright, not as a candle sheds its lights, but a glowing torch in the darkened night.