Until we meet again

This weekend I had my going away party. It's a week early, but I've been doing everything for India ahead of schedule. My roommate Catherine and my friend Nic did all of the planning. Kudos to them!

My vision for the party was that all of my close friends would come together, and we'd have way too much to drink, and then we'd have some drunken antics and talk about our favorite memories. So we bought a couple kegs and some liquor even though I was expecting only 30 - 40 people. In my mind I had a picture of an Irish wake. A mixture of celebration and reminiscing.

Now that the party's over, it's interesting to reflect back on it. We watched Florida fall, we laughed at Lebron's expense (Solid Gold!), we danced like idiots, and we belted out Justin Timberlake in falsetto at 3am. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But something was off-kilter about the ambience. Some people never came. Others left early, after we had only traded a few words in passing. What I thought would turn into raucous drinking passed instead as a relatively quiet night. There were some tender moments of hugs and hand-holding where people wordlessly expressed a sense of loss. I thought those were the nicest tributes imaginable, and beautiful, and genuine. There were a few times that I was surprisingly sad, despite the positive tone of the party and the generally festive mood. And in spite of my impending departure, the pivotal topic of moving to India almost never came up in conversation, as if my absence was a reality that nobody wanted to face. I enjoyed my party, but it caught me off-guard. I love my friends and I'm going to miss them all.