Once

Outside the bookstore today, several students embraced one another, talking over each other with joy: another year begins.

Once, I was lucky like those kids.

I too had a college family, perhaps more important even than my blood relatives. Comrades in theatre, faculty and peers, we created something beautiful, pleasurable, not just from the written word on a stage, but from and in each other.

A fourth college chum died today. She, and they, will burn bright always in memory.