By CAROLINE BODKIN
BREAKFAST - LUNCH - DINNER | CATERING/DELIVERY If we hadn’t taken the introductory philosophy course together, we never would have met. It was an unlikely confluence of lives that now, looking back, seems so inevitable and necessary.
We became friends for no reason other than that we comforted each other.
I liked the way she answered a question in class, we got to talking, and that was it.
Throughout our four years, we’d find each other in the dining halls or student center and take time to catch up or walk together to the gym. And over the years, our interactions amounted to genuine friendship.
I liked her for her surety. I liked that she knew exactly what courses she needed to take throughout all four years in order to complete her pre-med requirements — it took me until early junior year to declare my English major. I liked that though she didn’t have a boyfriend, she didn’t miss having one. I liked how she remembered my brother’s name, how she could always tell when I wanted to know the time, how she could listen to wild stories about parties she’d missed without seeming to feel left out for not having been there.
While the rest of us were funneling beers on Friday nights, Elyse was studying, or sleeping, or somewhere calm, and in bed early enough to get a healthy share of sleep.
To say she was quiet is like calling water colorless. She had a way of blending in with the noises around her so that she could be present without changing the look or feel of a place. She fit in not because she was accepted, but because she didn’t stand out.
It was her way. Sometime during our sophomore spring, she told me about her life outside the boundaries of our campus. First, she was paying for college herself. Her parents had divorced when she was very young; her father took off, and subsequently her mother became a recluse and a drunk. Her brother ran away when he was 17, and she hadn’t seen him since, though she got letters from him once every 18 months or so.
Have you ever had a moment when someone you don’t know well is giving you more information about his or her life than you feel you should have? This was not one of those moments. We were not best friends. I lived with six girls all four years of school, and she wasn’t one of them. But I received her personal information like a soft piece of silk, softly testing its grain, then putting it in an envelope for safe-keeping.
When we graduated, when I was running to a new city with no job and no security, she had already been accepted to med school. We didn’t speak much the first couple years out, but one year ago, through the college grapevine, I heard that her brother had died. No one knew any details other than that he was homeless in Portland, Ore., at the time.
Elyse was in her second year of med school by then, living in Chicago with a boyfriend she’d been dating for a while. Upon hearing the news, I called and wrote her. Only after four months of attempting contact did I receive a short e-mail back. The body read: “I’m fine. My mom is not. I will love my brother always, and I miss him now. I’ll write more later. Love, E.”
I said I’d fly out to visit her or pay for her to fly here, but she ignored my offers. I assumed she was too overwhelmed, and that she’d bring me back into her life when she had the energy and space to do so.
Last week I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize, and when I answered, I didn’t say hello, I said, “Elyse?” People are connected. We are all so totally connected to each other and to every living thing around us.
The clichés about “gone but not forgotten” and “small worlds” and people needing to connect are true.
Elyse stayed with me for a week before she took a flight to Australia, where she was going to work in a clinic.
I miss her, but the missing is a good feeling. (Caroline Bodkin writes and lives in Los Angeles. You can ).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 31, 2005. Read the original PDF.