I'll come back every month, she says to all her friends. So we can have our meeting.
But she's moving five hours away. She'll come back for a few months, I think, but then the new place will be home. She will drift further and further away, and then she will disappear over the horizon, an amiable memory at last.
We try to undo our departures. I'll be back for my birthday every year, or I'll be home for Christmas. Of course I'm coming for Easter dinner. Until the day you just can't. It doesn't make any sense any more. It's too far.
And besides -- you've made your place in the new place. You've crossed the border and have a new home, and new job, a new love, a set of new friends. Some people hold on elegantly to old friends, keeping in intimate touch with people for years. Most people do not, though.
Am I still a good friend if I leave them all behind? Does that mean there was something ungenuine about my love? No. It had a season and it had a place. It was built on everydayness, the common rhythm of life, that which births and feeds friendship everywhere, in all times.
And there is always the chance for it to come again: I may move back home. We may meet again, we may connect again. Let's all get together. We can get it all back. And everyone is amazed: it really is just like old times. People are older, but stll themselves. Even the dead are there, even the absent, even the estranged: remembered, rued, mourned, but there.
Love never ends. St. Paul said. Everything changes but love never ends. So we drift apart, but something ties us together still. We had a part in the building of one another. And they can't take that away.
+
They Can't Take That Away From Me
------Robbie Williams
The way you wear your hat
The way you sip your tea
The memory of all that
No, no they can't take that away from me
The way your smile just beams
The way you sing off key
The way you haunt my dreams
Oh, no they can't take that away from me
We may never, never meet again, on this bumpy road to love
Still I'll always, always keep the memory of
The way you hold your knife
The way we danced till three
The way you changed my life
Oh No. they can't take that away from me
No, no they can't take that away from me
We may never, never meet again, on this bumpy road to love
Still I'll always, always keep the memory of
The way you hold your knife
The way we danced till three
The way you changed my life
Oh No they can't take that away from me
No, they can't take that away from me
No they won't take that away from me
can't take that away
can't take that away
won't take that away
won't take that away
can't take that away
from
me.
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