* * *

Marti was a night owl. In all the years we’d been friends I’d never known her to go to sleep before I did.

  So when we got home and she asked, “Ready for bed?” I almost fell off my feet. Something was up. But I was too confused and worried to try to figure out what it was. So I just said sure, and we climbed into our bunks in Marti’s room, said our goodnights and turned out the light. She was breathing steadily within minutes. Normally Marti and I would stay up and talk for hours about everything from which M&M color we ate first to the meaning of life itself. But not tonight. Tonight we were busy with other things:

Marti was sleeping.

I was worrying.

  Finally I couldn’t take lying down anymore. Somehow worrying is a sport which requires sitting up. So I went out to Marti’s kitchen in my pj’s and slippers and made a cup of coffee. The night air was warm, and the stars were out, so I drank it on the deck out by the rippling waves. I thought about life, and its changes. I thought about how friends grow apart. Mostly I thought about how each of us grow apart from our former self: each year becoming a new individual with different thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams.

And I prayed, as I hadn’t prayed in a long time.

 

And the stars smiled down on me like lost friends in the sky.