There were six of us in the beginning. I will always remember it as the beginning; before we came together I had experienced nothing worth remembering. Our friendships developed out of necessity. We were slowly but surely walking the tightrope to adulthood without a safety net. We weren’t lonely, at least not all of the time, but we were alone heading into the hardest years of our lives. And then our stars aligned, and our friendship began.

A childhood friend must meet only a few simple criteria: they must be about your size and be at a similar point in their cognitive development, and it helps if their parents can afford cooler gadgets and gizmos than yours. Real friends are more than a distraction, and thus more difficult to find. Most had yet to realize this at our age, and if anything can be credited for our bond, it was that understanding. We put one another before anything else, and that loyalty was all that truly mattered. 

By any logical measure, we shouldn’t have gotten along. We liked sports and music, and we knew how to throw a party, but we had wildly different personalities. My friends were often reckless, rowdy, arrogant, aggressive, ignorant and inflammatory with only a basic sense of self-preservation. Thor habitually sought out trouble, just as Mitch did brawls. Taylor and Nick saw every interaction as an opportunity to prove their masculinity. And under no circumstances, despite considerable effort, were we ever able to convince Jake that he was anything but our supreme leader. Even I, with my chronic cynicism and vocal liberal ideology, drew some ire over the years. We truly exhausted each other, and we butted heads daily.

I can’t say for certain that they were good people, but it never mattered; they were my friends. We were angry adolescents leading less than charmed existences, and we craved security. We belonged together, not because we were blood relatives or hockey players or theater enthusiasts or honors students, but because we’d chosen to be. I always had a couch to sleep on when I had nowhere else to go. I always had a ride home in the middle of the night when I got in over my head. I always had someone to share the battle scars when an irritable Cro-Magnon took exception to my breathing the same air as his girlfriend. And I always did the same for them.

Outside of perhaps my immediate family, I’ve spent more time with them than anyone else. We ate dollar burgers in Veseli every Wednesday, long before it was cool. We went out to a generic house party every Friday, realized how few guests we liked, and burned a few bridges. We took turns hosting Saturday nights, and told the same stories until the sun came up. And every Sunday morning was spent at a diner in Belle Plaine, collecting ourselves over black coffee while Mitch flirted unsuccessfully with the waitress.

Our patterns of conversation became so comfortable that within seconds I was far from my stresses and insecurities. We were a self-contained vacation; I’d rather spend every Sunday morning watching Mitch strike out with that pretty redhead than sitting on a beach in the Dominican Republic. Because, unfortunately, my friends do not live in the Dominican Republic. They live in a dot on the map of a state that suffers from tundra-like weather, abysmal professional sports teams, and bizarre conglomerations of tater-tots and cream of mushroom soup. But they make me grateful to have grown up here with them.

There were six of us in the beginning. Now there are five. We know this, but none of us seem to have fully realized it. Sunday will be Taylor’s burial, and the last time we are together. The six of us will become a memory.

I suspect it won’t truly hit us until then, and then we’ll start working on our new beginning. I don’t know how, but we’ll figure it out. That’s what friends are for.