Here lies my college graduation.

After five long years, you were taken away.

Canceled, deceased, whisked away with the rise of social distancing and ventilator fears. I’m glad you don’t have to see what the world is going through these days. You wouldn’t have liked it.

I always dreamt about the day we would be together on a loud and crowded stage. I imagine that I would be at least a couple beers deep, that I would half hazardly stumble across the stage, catch myself on the podium, and we would finally embrace each other.

But sady, our chance meeting that was to exist for just a day, has now been taken away for a lifetime. You were the last tangible celebration I was to have. The last little hurrah I’d have before entering the job force, moving to a big city, and ultimately getting beaten down by the realities of our cruel cruel world.

I am sorry that we were never able to meet and greet one another on that loud stage. I hope you have found peace. I have tried to find it in your absence. My mom played the graduation song on youtube for me and my family made me a cake.

And in that moment of hearing that song and my sister handing me a rolled up piece of paper as a stand in for my diploma, I felt like a graduate.