A happy sad day

It was at my first job ever where I met this girl with a big smile, a filthy mouth and beautiful long hair, which she always wore as a pony tail. So this is ancient history, literally.

Her name is Anca. I think I almost had a crush on her for a while. She was so full of life, and so funny. And I was a kid fresh out of highschool, with little to no brains at all, feeling lost and alone in the big city, while she had already graduated medical school. So she was (almost) an MD, and she was taking another job while completing her studies.

So for a few months we digitally painted cartoons together. But when we all decided to leave after two or more months without payment (a long story, no place for it here), we kept in touch… sort of…

Although we were living in the same city, we didn’t see each other very often. First because of me, the perpetual student who didn’t seem to be able to graduate, then because of my countless jobs with long hours, many times late into the night, somehow this shitty everyday life always seemed to get in the way. But we occasionally spoke on the phone and payed each other short visits.

We eventually met her family and discovered that her husband, Sever the surgeon, was just as funny, and decent, and hard working and dependable as she was. A few years down the line came their son, Victor, which was by far the funniest and the smartest kid I have even met.

Then they had to move to the opposite corner of the country, because they couldn’t find the money needed to ”grease” the wheels in the system. They couldn’t get jobs as doctors in the capital of this fucking country, so they moved somewhere else. I know both me and Crenguţa were saddened by this, but I also felt rage because I knew the system and I knew there are very few chances to fight it and succeed. For a while I had suspected them of choosing the easy way out, but now I know better.

So our already not-so-often visits disappeared altogether; we kept in touch on the phone, but this is hardly a relationship. Our feelings (mine, at least) never changed, though. Once in a while I would think of them, so distant in that obscure part of the country, and my heart would fill with a painfull mixture of fondness and sadness and sense of loss…

Then came Crenguţa’s health problem and the sky collapsed on both our heads… There were many things we did wrong or we didn’t do at all, one of them being not keeping in touch with almost anyone, including Anca and Sever. But we owe them a great deal, they always helped with medical problems when we didn’t know which way to turn next, by recommending us to fellow doctors, or questioning around about this or that doctor on behalf of us…

Anyway, this morning I got an e-mail from Anca. It had no subject line, and the body had only a few lines, saying:

My dears,
We are leaving for Lille, France, to work there. We hope everything will turn out allright, and that we and Victor will be able to adjust. Stay safe and be sure to visit us when in the area.

With love,
Anca and Sever

I immediately tried to call her on her mobile but got no answer, and she never returned my calls. I was finally able to get her on the phone and find out more about what’s going on. So they got really good job offers in Lille, which I’m really happy to know. They don’t have a place to stay at the moment, so they will be living in a student campus. Only Anca and Sever are going for now, and they’ll bring Victor and Anca’s mother when things settle a bit.

It’s moments like this when you realize how stupid you can sometimes be… Yes, they were far away, but that shouldn’t have been a problem. We should have visited more often, we should have spoken more often, we should have been there for each other.

I don’t want this to sound like it’s the end of the world (although it surely feels like that now), but let’s be frank: we couldn’t manage to go see them in their new home a few hundreds kilometers away, inside the same country. How often are we going to see them now that they are thousands of kilometers away, and in a different country?

This is what really saddens me the most, although I’m very happy for them and I pray that things turn out very well for them. It feels like I’m loosing them all over again!

OK, I’ll cut my whining short now, and leave you with a beautiful song and a couple of old pictures (they were taken 3 years ago) of Anca, Sever and Victor.

Best of luck to all of you! We love you. We’ll surely miss you.

Anca, this song is for you: [audio:eddie-vedder-long-nights.mp3]
Long Nights, by Eddie Vedder

Note: I had to change the file’s name and the player plugin, because the jerks at beemp3.com were hotlinking to the .mp3 on my server, there were roughly 15 hits a day at 6MBs a piece…