"A day I will never forget..."

"Oh, thats a day I will never forget." As I child, I vividly remember my mother using that phrase from time to time and wondering how in the world any day could be so memorable that it would never be forgotten. I usually couldn't remember what I ate for lunch on a given day (and oftentimes still can't), so the thought of remembering an entire day for the rest of my life was incomprehensible.

Obviously, in the years that followed, I would come to understand the meaning of that phrase, in many instances, wishing I could have maintained the naivete that accompanied my childhood. Today, at likely the same age my mother was in the first days I remember her uttering those words, I recall a number of days that I will never forget.  I remember the very first time I had that feeling -- I was probably 6 or 7, at a local art fest, and had found a craft that I just *knew* my mother would love. I grabbed it and ran off to show her, only to be apprehended by an over-zealous police officer with the words "you're under arrest." My heart stopped, and immediately realizing what I had done, I threw the object at him & took off running, also realizing quickly thereafter that he was likely only trying to frighten me.  But of all the days, both good and bad, one comes painfully back to mind every October 17...

October 17, 2002 - A Thursday night, I was at my house in Clinton, Mississippi, when my phone rang. Molly Walker was calling -- just a few hours after I had left her house to drop off an edit of a law journal article she had written -- to tell me that my best friend, William Gates, was dead. "Krisi, it's Molly," she said.  "I have some bad news. William was killed in a car accident tonight." Even as I sit here typing, my chest is getting tight, remembering how I physically collapsed  upon hearing those words. Immediately replaying that day's events in my mind... trying to call him with no answer several times on my way home from Molly's, wondering where he was and why he wasn't answering... And the last time I had seen him... the previous afternoon, we met on the street corner outside my office to exchange a VCR tape containing episodes of Ed that I had recorded for him. He wanted to catch up before the new episode that night. (In law school, we watched it together every week.) The absolute agony I felt that night, and in the ensuing days, is no less strong today than it was eight years ago. Not only will I never forget the events of that day, I will never forget the feeling.

I wanted to describe all the things that William was. But I am at a loss. The best I can say is that he was my best friend. He was my voice of reason, my sounding board. He let me be a compete dork (I carried around a random stick the entire exam season my fourth semester of law school), he fed my neuroses (he sat in front of me wearing a green Masters hat during every exam, and even went home to get it once when he wore the wrong one), but most of all he kept me in line.

I will never forget, the summer of 2001, we were both clerking in Nashville. I called him late one night, fretting about a boy who was not my husband. He asked me to meet him for brunch at Noshville the next day, which I did. William was a jokester, hardly ever serious. But he looked at me very seriously over eggs benedict and said "Krisi, PJ is your husband. It shouldn't even be necessary for us to have this conversation." I respected him so much, respected his opinion, respected his advice, that I immediately tucked my elementary feelings away, and slid back into my corner. Embarrassed, in fact, that we were indeed having the conversation.

I remember that day often. And in the past eight years, as I've thought about William, I've thought about that conversation. I've often wondered about similar conversations we might have had, had he been alive. I have NO doubt that he would adore his little namesake, were he alive to know him. But I have to wonder, had he been around, would things have been different? Would one of his few "serious" conversations have prevented any of my many (mis)steps along the way? 

Sorrowful & thankful at the same time, I'll never know the answer to those questions. Instead I will pursue this life, hopeful that I can raise little Gates to be the kind of friend big Gates was to me.