-Lifelong Connection-

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Over the course of our lifetimes, we connect with a lot of people.

Some of those connections last for just a split second, or a moment, or a temporary period of time, and others become lifelong connections.

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As a 23 year-old human, I’ve connected with a lot of people.

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Some of those connections lasted for split seconds, some for moments, and others for periods of time, but the really good ones turned into connections that I hope will last for a lifetime.

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One of those lifelong connections sprouted in 2014, sometime in November, with a person named Kevin. We met at a farm in Milwaukee called Growing Power. I was a volunteer, and he was a new intern. I was 19, and he was 21. 

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I remember the night we met. I was at the apartment shared by the Growing Power interns, and we were playing guitars and singing songs. This was the night Kevin was first moving into the apartment. When he entered the house, we stopped playing, and he encouraged us to continue. We asked if he sang or played, and he replied that he didn’t, but he could be our “tambourine girl.”

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I liked his response.

Over the next couple months, we quickly bonded over our similar senses of humor and our shared infatuation over the same guy.

Kevin had so many stories when we met. He had lived so many adventures: traveling the country, WWOOFING, and visiting communes. He was easily one of the most interesting people I had ever met, and as our friendship grew, I continued to be amazed by him and amazed that such an amazing human would want to be my friend.

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Eventually, Kevin left Milwaukee to work at a different farm in Madison, and then left again to work at farm in Maryland.

Our first goodbye was pretty epic. I remember standing by the front door of the interns’ apartment in Milwaukee, snow falling, as the two of us waved goodbye to other interns that had to go to work that morning. Kevin and I went back and forth narrating “the end of an era” in our best Morgan Freeman voices. I remember clinging to him that day: the way I would cling to my sister when I didn’t want to say goodbye. Every time a conversation would be winding down, I’d start up a new one, trying to get one more laugh in before parting ways.

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Eventually, after a whole morning of saying goodbye, I finally left. But luckily, that wasn’t the final goodbye. In fact, we’d say goodbye many times after that, but our friendship would continue to grow with every one.

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Over the next 3 years and 5 months, our friendship mainly consisted of phone calls and video calls and a couple spontaneous cross-country visits- roaming the streets and swamps and Whole Foods of different cities, talking straight nonsense in goofy voices, and in an instant, shifting to more intense conversation about life and injustice and everything that mattered to us.

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We said goodbye in Milwaukee three times: the first time, New Year’s day of 2015, and some other time in the following month. We said goodbye in Madison at the dairy farm he worked at, where I met a day old calf named Douglas. We said goodbye on phone calls and video calls. I remember some of those calls so clearly: like the time Kevin was living in a single apartment, doing night school, and fostering a shitload of kittens.

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When we finally said “hello” in person again, we were in Kansas City, and that was when I knew we would be friends for life.

And we said goodbye in Kansas City too, but only after bringing my sister’s dog to a swamp and getting her all muddy, and eating a whole watermelon while watching Ru Paul’s Drag Race, and dancing around my room upstairs calling ourselves “Rainbop” and playing like we were little kids.

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I remember talking to Kevin on the phone, when I was in Florida during my term of service with AmeriCorps NCCC and telling him I’d found another Growing Power community. I remember calling him again when I was “going through it” in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and being so reenergized by the time we were saying goodbye on that phone call.

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And I remember saying “see you soon,” when he called, with only 3 days notice, telling me he was coming to visit me in New Orleans from Maryland. And I remember excitedly telling my teammates about him before he arrived. And I remember saying goodbye on the phone when he told me we were in the same state- I remember making that phone call just a little longer, by asking him what colors to tie-dye my shirt and him asking me “what would Rainbop do?” And I remember him coming over the next day while my AmeriFamily did Zumba in our living room, and he joined in awkwardly and told me our house smelled bad, which was true.

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And so many other things happened in there, in that visit, and all the other visits and phone calls and conversations. And we laughed and we cried and spoke in silly voices and made more jokes and played like kids.

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And then, like every other time, we said goodbye in New Orleans. 

But that was the last goodbye.
 

The final goodbye.
 

The last time I saw him, and the last time I will ever see him in this life.

Since the moment Kevin entered my life, our connection continued to grow into one of the most important connections of my life.

And even though he is not alive anymore, our connection and the impact Kevin has on my life will continue for the rest of my lifetime.

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