“No Goodbyes — just good memories.”
Tasha Yar, from the Season 1 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Skin of Evil
Honestly, I’ve spent weeks struggling with how to write these next two entries for my blog — partly because I didn’t want readers to come away making some assumptions about a) the length of time it has been since my last post and b) the meaning behind the title. So let’s get one thing straight right out of the gate — no, I have not lost a loved one, a pet, or even a potted plant for that matter.
But that leads me to the main reason I’ve been dragging my feet: in a way, I have experienced a loss of sorts. And, frankly, the pain is nearly as acute as if I had lost a loved one, a pet or that pesky potted plant that I’ve been trying to kill for the last decade. (Fortunately for the plant, it’s plastic and already quite dead.)
For some two and half decades, my friend Bryant was a near-constant presence in my life; we met the day I joined the I.T. team as a fresh-scrubbed young’n from New England, with stars in my eyes and a boundless enthusiasm for coding my way out of nearly any impossibility. He was the semi-grizzled old-timer who had already seen it all — despite being barely ten years older than me.
The two of us bonded over all things tech, discovered we had a mutual affinity for Star Trek and modeling. In sort, we were the sort of duo who could sit and endlessly talk about starship design and the latest advances in cloud computing without having whiplash. Our significant others often rolled their eyes whenever we were together, for truly, the two of us are poster children for Geeks United.
It was Bryant who talked me into returning to my former position after a decade away; he was also the one who, when I observed how few of the remaining cast members from the original Star Trek series were still doing the convention circuit, rather sensibly recommended we do something about that — thus beginning our annual sojourn to Las Vegas each August. Had we not had the pandemic interruption of 2020, this would be our ninth consecutive year of attendance.
So I could be forgiven for choosing to ignore his hints about wanting to retire; they had been sprinkled in here and there, but felt more like the kind of aspirational mantra one uses when it’s been a particular bad day at the office. Bryant’s first overt comment had come over margaritas and street tacos at Guy Fieri’s restaurant while we were at the 2019 convention; our drinks had seemed especially strong that evening, the perfect recipe for allowing truths to surface that we’d normally keep buried. I’d shrugged it off with a smile and told myself there was no way Bryant was ready to walk away from the amazing work we did at the U. Not yet, not when the field was exploding the way it was.
The pandemic altered everything, of course; we came out of it as different human beings, for better or worse. I realized I was wasting precious time commuting back and forth to the office — time that could be better spent with my family; it took me a long, long time to accept being back in the office full time. Bryant had been the one — once again — carefully guiding me into embracing our new reality. It was his way, perhaps, of gently reminding me that nothing remains static.
It’s not much of a surprise, then, that after our return from the convention this past summer even I could see my friend was ready for a change. When he finally made it official in March, I was sad to see the end of an era but also had a heart full of joy: Bryant would finally be able to get through that endless list of projects that has never grown any shorter in the years I have known him.
The building is far emptier without his buoyant, wry presence, and I dearly miss poking my head into his office next door to chat about anything and everything. I still see him, of course; it’s just a more deliberate thing now, something we have to actually plan for. Calls and texts are fine, but it’s simply not the same as having him around. Friends are our chosen family, no question, and this particular member of mine feels a bit like he’s taken off for the north country on permanent hiatus. We’ll find an equilibrium over the summer, I’m sure — and, of course, we’ll be going to Las Vegas again in August. So, I suppose, not everything has changed.
But enough has.