I’m starting to understand what Anne Rice harped on so often in her Vampire Chronicles so much. Eternal life here on Earth would not be as great as some might believe it would be. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think I could make it work, but it wouldn’t be all unicorns and rainbows like you might first believe. In the Vampire Chronicles, the vampire Lestat, the most famous vampire after Dracula I would argue, often laments being “alive” for so long. Vampires often have to go into decades-long hibernation just to be able to deal with living so long.

The loss and pain of losing others tend to catch up to these creatures and cause massive amounts of pain and depression. I have lost more people in my life than I thought I would by this point in my life. Currently, I am 41 years old, and I can think of many friends that I have already lost to death and many more family members. I would like to talk about one of these that has been on my mind here recently and why I miss him. For the sake of anyone who might know these folks and be sad with me, I am going to use a fake name.

When I was a kid, I had a good friend. I know, shocking that I had a friend, but I did. And this friend was a great guy. I will call him Charles. When I was around eight years old, Charles and I’s entire relationship consisted of playing Nintendo and using the Game Genie to try to find ways to make Mario invincible so we could actually beat Super Mario 3. We were terrible at it. He would come to my house and spend the night and we would stay up to all hours of the night playing games together, going on adventures, and discovering new worlds through my little 13-inch TV.  Later on, I got a new 25-inch TV and we thought we had died and gone to gaming heaven, it was so big!

When I was around 14 years old, we had upgraded our gaming to the Super Nintendo and one weekend Charles brought over a game on a Friday night that he had borrowed from a friend for the weekend. We started playing Chrono Trigger, a Japanese RPG, at around 6:00 p.m. We saw the credits roll at around 8:00 a.m. the next morning. It was the first time I had ever stayed up all night. It also helped that Chrono Trigger is one of the greatest games of all time. The story sucked us in. Time travel, revenge, and alien invaders who are trying to literally eat the Earth kept us glued to the TV set.

Charles and I grew apart after High School. The next time I heard about him, my mother was telling me that he had died. We never heard what had killed him, he was still really young. I was at the end of my time in college at MVNU and I remember Dad asking if I wanted to go to the funeral. I said yes. We went and I remember seeing his family there, but I don’t think they recognized me. I’m sure they were in shock. It was so sudden after all. It was one of the first times I had lost a childhood friend. To this day, I drive past his old house and always… always think about my friend.

Every year, I play through Chrono Trigger at least once. I play through the adventure I had with my friend and think about the first time I went on this journey. How childhood felt like it had been forgotten, we were adults; staying up late and doing what we wanted. We could save the world from the comfort of my bedroom. We could be heroes and leave the confines of a little holler in Sissonville to roam a new and magical world, if only for a little while. Just one night. For just one night we were more than just little boys, trying to understand the world and our place in it. Charles was a good friend. He was my friend and I will always remember him.

I guess, I just miss my friend.

D. Michl Lowe