You don't know what you've got til it's gone

There’s a song called, Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell that includes the line, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”. Those words are so true but their meaning runs deeper when you directly experience loss.

As a child growing up in the safe and planned suburb that is Irvine, California, my best friend was John Lyons. He was literally the kid across the street. In elementary school we were inseparable. He was my brother from another mother. My early childhood memories are filled with our adventures together. But just as a stream can over time erode a landscape to form a canyon, it too sometimes does so to friends. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't let that happen but I'm not the person I was at 14.

About 10 years later I reached out to him because I was moving out of the area and didn’t know when I would see him again despite the fact that it had already been years. John’s lifestyle at the time was so different from mine that to my 24 year old self, it seemed that we continued to have little in common so the meeting was short.

As the years went by we got back in touch. Usually it was a phone call or a text wishing the other a happy birthday. Then in 2016 I was in town so we met for lunch. John had had a very difficult adult life. He had more than his share of bad luck and bad decisions. I respected him though because he never pointed the finger anywhere but at himself. He fully owned every choice he made. I’ve met very few people in my life that do that. So many of those were displayed on him like battlefield scars. While on the outside he was almost unrecognizable to me, over the next hour or so while we munched on Vietnamese sandwiches, I came to realize that on the inside he was still the same kid with whom I built forts, caught lizards, rode bikes, and a nearly endless list of other cherished childhood moments we spent together. He was kind, thoughtful, curious, and despite all he had been through, optimistic.

That day we promised to be more in each other’s lives. We would get in touch more often. We would see each other whenever I was back in town. We would be close friends once again.

About a month later, I was driving to pick my son up from school when I received a text from John’s younger sister Sara. It just asked me to call her. My instincts told me that something bad had happened to John. He had had surgery a few weeks before and my texts to him asking how it had gone went unanswered. Perhaps the surgery had not gone well. Perhaps something even worse had occurred. When I got home I called and she gave me the news. John had gone out for a walk the night before and never come home. He was found dead in a parking lot near where he lived. CCTV camera footage showed him standing alone in the darkness when decades of smoking finally caught up with him. He had a massive heart attack and died.

If you had asked me before it happened how I would feel, I would have told you that certainly I would be sad but that’s an intellectual answer. It’s hard to know what the emotional impact will truly be until it happens. It was one of the very few times in my life that I’ve been overwhelmed with grief. I had never lost anyone that close to me before. My kids had never seen me grieve before. I think it’s even worse when it’s a childhood friend because as we get older, those who knew us when we were young become more important for some reason. That’s at least been my experience.

I miss John dearly. I didn’t know just how badly I would miss him until he was gone. If there was a positive that came out of his death, it’s that I now very much appreciate those who are important to me while they are still living. I never again want to experience not knowing what I’ve got until it’s gone.