A close parallel to the distinction between flotsam and jetsam: those relationships lost in the chaos and confusion of a major life transition, and those intentionally discarded to lighten the load. There is a third category as well. Or perhaps it is only flotsam’s prodromal phase: those relationships holding fast through the swells, resolute, clinging to the rails even as the ship is thrown violently against the rocks.
And I’m not talking about people here. Or, not exclusively so. Our relationships with people are not different in their essence from our relationships to the other items on the ship’s manifest, not different in their form from our connections to other valued objects inhabiting our emotional cargo hold. I mourn friends I have lost, those who were swept overboard during storms of crisis, transition, and transformation. But I also mourn those parts of myself that were torn from me, cherished hopes that got caught up in the rigging and were pulled silently overboard into the waves, involuntary amputations of dreams made weak through idleness, partially ruptured plans pushed aside and rendered gangrenous by inattention.
In the calm of the early evening, as the effects of the wine first settle in, there is a moment or two of nostalgic recollection, almost as if I am standing two decades in the past, almost as if the last twenty-two years were only yesterday, almost as if when I open my eyes I will see the house that harbored so much potential, each corner of each room replete with shadows of a future treasure, a kitchen filled with laughter, a feeling of family, an incipient awareness of true purpose.
And the echoes of laughter become the mournful cry of a lone seagull outside my futureless apartment.
I’m feeling the same in an apartment of Miami.