The Last Time

I remember reading somewhere once that our minds aren’t built to process “the last time.” That if we were able to recognize all of the “last times” big and small as they were happening to us, we couldn’t bear it.

I’ve been wondering lately – if I could choose to know that something was the last time, in real time, would I do it?

There have been a couple big Last Time milestones that my friends and I all knew were coming. The one that stands out above all others is college graduation. There were two weeks of festivities leading up to Commencement: Senior Week was first and Parents Week followed it. The night I remember most vividly is the last night of Senior Week. Moms, dads, grandparents, and siblings were going to start rolling into town the next morning, armed with reservations for fancy restaurants around Cambridge and with days’ worth of boxes to check off their Boston sightseeing lists. This was the last night my housemates and I were all going to be in the same place together, just us seniors. And we knew it. I remember all one hundred of us piling into the PfoHo dining hall the second the kitchen doors opened at 5:05. We brought bottles of everything – beer. Cheap wine. Champagne. Goldschalger. Some of us brown-bagged it. Others didn’t bother. We pulled all the tables together to make one long dining surface that ran from one end of the hall to the other. We loaded up our trays with potato triettes and hangover chicken (not to be confused with chickwiches, also represented) and fro-yo covered with Cracklin’ Oat Bran. All the classics. We sat side by side at our one big table. We drank straight from whatever open containers got passed our way. We hurled good-natured insults and yelled well-worn jokes and went back into the kitchen for seconds and thirds. When the doors closed at 7:45 we all cried. So did the kitchen staff and so did our TFs. I sat next to my friend Richard at dinner. I remember telling him later that that night was the first time I’d ever felt myself consciously making a memory. Doing everything I could to hold every detail steady in my mind as the minutes we had together slipped away. I remember realizing that nostalgia was something I could feel in real time. The next night a handful of our housemates were absent, out to dinner with their families. A few days after that our numbers really started to dwindle. And a week later we were gone.

Most of my last times have been different than that. Much smaller. And only recognizable in hindsight. I remember having a regular nightly routine when I was six or seven years old. My dad would go up into the great room to watch sports after he got home from work and had dinner, and I’d follow him up there in my pajamas. I waited until he sat down and then I’d plop into the small space between him and the armrest of the grey leather chair he sat in. He’d put his arm around me and we’d watch TV together. I remember wandering up there one night and it taking more effort than usual to wriggle my way into my typical spot. I remember sitting there for a couple of minutes but I couldn’t get comfortable. I just didn’t fit anymore.

 I climbed down, sat next to the ottoman, and watched from there instead. The next night I sat by the ottoman again without trying to squeeze into the space I’d outgrown beside my dad. I remember feeling sad and not really knowing why.

A small handful of last times I think will always make me wonder: what if I had known?

In the summer of 2009 I was down on the Cape with Brian and his family. His parents had rented a house on the water in Chatham and Brian and I headed out for a walk in the woods in the early afternoon. I remember winding through the trees, following an overgrown set of railroad tracks we found, and eventually coming out onto a random street – one that I recognized. I grabbed his hand and we made a couple of turns and then I finally realized where I was – Bay View Road. The street where my grandparents lived. It would be another four years until I caved and got a smartphone, so we wandered around GPS-less for a few minutes until I spotted it – the back of their house at the top of the street. I recognized the pane glass windows of their sunroom and I could see my grandmother sitting just past them in her recliner. I remembered my aunt’s warning from the birthday party we’d thrown for my grandfather the December prior: “She’s got a goddamn pacemaker, so let’s not all pop out and yell at once.” I stepped quietly across the backyard and knocked gingerly on the glass. Grammie looked over and it took her a second to register what she was seeing. But then she yelled to my grandfather and he got up from the couch and opened the garage door for us.

 I don’t remember a single thing we talked about. But I remember the sun streaming in through the windows and the wooden mallards my grandmother collected perched on the shelves all around us. My grandfather had on a white t-shirt. He’d tucked it into his pressed khakis and was wearing a belt. It was the first time Brian had met my grandparents. I remember laughing and laughing as we marveled at the dumb luck that had brought us there and we swapped stories about what we’d been up to that summer. I remember my Grammie limping when she got up from her recliner to hug me and wondering if she’d hurt her foot. We talked until the sun started to get low, and Brian and I said we had to get back to the rental house before we lost all ability to find our way. I remember my Grammie and Grampa smiling and waving in the driveway as we strolled down the street and rounded the corner.

 That was the last time I saw her. They stayed down on the Cape for Christmas that year and Brian and I spent the holiday with my family and New Years in Paris. I got a call from my dad at the beginning of April telling me my Grammie was in the hospital and that she had to have her hip replaced. A couple days later I heard she wasn’t recovering very well. And then I got a call telling me that she’d died.

It was almost exactly seven years later that I was sitting in my room at the Aloft just outside of Cleveland, on one of my first trips to present to my new client after taking my job at Arnold. Rough patches throughout Brian’s and my stint in New York from 2012-2014 had given way to Rough as a state of being throughout the majority of 2015 and into the following year. I remember my phone buzzing on the bed as I brushed my teeth and got ready to meet my work buddies downstairs at the bar. I looked down and saw Brian’s name there, scrolling across the top of the screen. I hesitated for a second, then hit a button to silence my phone and went down to the lobby to find my friends.

 It wasn’t the last time Brian and I ever communicated. But that was the last time he ever called me.

Six months ago I left Hingham long before the crack of dawn to catch an early flight to join my friends on my first cruise. I knew something was off; I’d felt it all week. I’d come close to canceling my flight more than once. I told myself that everything was fine as I walked out of the house and I tossed my bag into the backseat of my car. But before I climbed in I leaned against the driver’s side door and looked up – I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen that many stars. It was gorgeous. I stood there for a little while, breathing in the chilly air and feeling my heart rate start to come down. I looked at the big black truck that we’d picked out together in May and that we’d washed earlier in the week. The one thing we didn’t touch were his daughter’s toe prints on the inside of the windshield, imprinted from when she’d put her feet up on the dash the last time she’d been home. They’d made him smile so they made me smile. I started my car and pulled out of the driveway.

 It was the last time I was ever there.

So…what if I had known. Would I have done something differently? Would I have done everything differently? Would I have sacrificed simple joy and naïve hope for definitive purpose and choreographed closure?

 If I had known in those Last Time moments to make a memory, how would I have architected it?

 Would my life look different now?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the senior class of 2020. The ones who didn’t know that a random Tuesday in March was the last time they’d be able to pull all the tables together to sit side by side with their classmates. They docked their boats after practice, probably tired and chilly and eager to rack them so they could get out of the early spring chop and into a hot shower. They didn’t know that those were the last rowing strokes they’d ever take. Obama doing a Zoom commencement speech is amazing – but holy shit it’s nowhere close to our slow shuffle from the Quad down Garden Street on a humid morning in early June, when the mere sight of the well-intentioned mimosas lining the walkway into the Yard made 90% of us want to hurl our guts out. We grumbled about the heat and we bemoaned our hangovers and many of us were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves when we got through the gates and ran smack into the Class of 1944, whose alums would be leading us into Tercentenary Theatre for graduation. They were stooped and frail and dressed to the nines and beaming. The last woman I passed was carrying the edge of the Class of ’44 banner. “Enjoy it,” she said, “It goes by so fast.”

It goes by so fast.

That’s a truth that holds up whether you spend your time consciously cataloguing your memories or not. I wonder about how many “last times” have happened for me, and for all of us, as we squint and strain to see what life is going to look like on the other side of all of this. I worry about how many “last times” have already happened that I don’t know to miss yet. I hope I get a chance to learn that new bartender’s name at Lucky’s. I want to go scuba diving in the Keys and wander around Asia with Cole again. I want to stand on a crowded riverbank the same way we do every third weekend in October and watch Gevvie lead the pack at Head of the Charles. They’ve already closed most of the public parking lots along the river. There have been rumblings for weeks that there’s no way HOCR is gonna go off this year. I have the same thought every morning when I de-rig my boat after a row, put it on top of my car, and pull out of one of the few lots that’s still open: please don’t let this be the last time.

I think whoever wrote that bit about last times was right. I don’t want to know. I want to keep planning for next times and first times. I want to do a better job of cherishing the memories that I have; I want to do a much better job not dwelling there. I want to get better at saying the things that have always been so much easier for me to type - I love you. I miss you. I screwed up and I’m sorry. You mean more to me than you know. Not because I’m worried it’s the last time. But because I think it every time. And it doesn’t come out of my mouth nearly enough.

So thank you for reading, friends. I’m lucky to have you. See you next time.