On the Death of My Girlfriend

in an era before digital photography, sometimes only blurry memories remain

Although Facebook has been known to facilitate genocide and undermine democracy, it can, under the right conditions, perform its intended task of connecting us to one another. It can provide a platform to share important milestones in our lives: the birth of a child, the start of a job, the end of a life.

It was this last category of announcement that greeted me last week. 

The fact we lived so close to one another had as much to do with how things developed as anything. But what started out as a casual friendship quickly and unexpectedly developed into something more. She was beautiful. She was kind. What she saw in me was something of a mystery to me then (and, frankly it still is), but I certainly welcomed the attention. It was new and exciting… but it did not last. From beginning to end, the affair lasted maybe a month.

I should clarify here that all this happened a quarter-century ago in 1996 when I was a sophomore in college. 

Although our relationship with one another did not last, our subsequent relationships fared far better. I know this because we stayed in touch. I attended her wedding. She and her husband met up for dinner with me and the woman who would later become my wife. We touched base every few years as we crossed the various milestones of life. We congratulated one another after the birth of our daughters. We made plans for our families to meet. We checked in to see how we were faring during the pandemic. And, of course, we were able to get a sense of what one another was doing to superficial degree facilitated by status updates on social media. I saw the desserts she was baking. I saw the art she was creating. And on a Tuesday in September, I read a post uploaded by her husband that shared the news that she had died a few days before.

Although I do have fond memories of this woman who was once my girlfriend, I never thought of her as “the one who got away.” I have not spent the last 25 years pining after her. Even so, her sudden and unexpected passing upset me in a way that surprised me. For years I understood our brief relationship in a simple, static way: she was a girl I dated in college who, in all likelihood, gave me a mild case of mono. But this past week I’ve come to realize the relationship meant more than that simple one-liner would suggest. 

Despite its brevity, the relationship was intense - or at least it was intense for the twenty-year-old version of me. The intimacy was also a new and mysterious thing. I won’t go into any great detail about this other than to say that yes, we did make out, but no, beyond that it was all fairly innocent. To be sure, there were parts of that month that were pleasurable, but there were also parts that were confusing. It’s clear to me now that at that point in my life, I wasn’t mature enough to handle the emotional responsibility of a committed relationship. At the time, I was not ready to love.

A quarter-century later, I have a better understanding of how my experience with this woman helped move me to a place where I could do those things. Our relationship nudged me in a direction where I could love and be loved. I still had a ways to go back then (I probably still do), but I like to think that the “failure” of our relationship with one another helped both of our subsequent relationships to succeed. 

I know that was the case with me: I ended up marrying the next person I dated. 

The tragedy of this woman’s passing obviously falls heaviest on her husband and daughter. The immensity of their loss is unfathomable. At her memorial service, her husband of eighteen years stated she made him a better person. I certainly don’t want to take anything away from the emotional resonance of that statement, but I could say the exact same thing.

Of course, I can’t tell her that now. One of the many sad ironies of death is that it brings into sharp focus all the ways in which we are connected and our stories are intertwined, but that revelation arrives too late. It arrives too late to send an email. It arrives too late to send a message on Facebook. 

All I can do is hold on to the fleeting moments we shared together on the fifth floor of a dormitory in Austin. Since I’m the only one left to have experienced those moments of youthful splendor, it’s my job to preserve them. It’s my job to cherish them. It’s my job to be grateful for them.