The shadow of these days will never leave you.
In the murmur of a crowded room, you will hear his voice, and you�ll turn to greet him with the light of expectation in your eyes. In the falling leaves of autumn, you will hear the echo of bagpipes, the haunting melody of those days, and it will remind you of him, of all of them. As snow falls on winter mornings of the future, blanketing the ground in cleansing powder, you will see in your mind the shadows of boys, clinging to each other in their brokenness.
Your years will finish here, your last remaining years with the only people in the world that understand your pain, and you will part, with the promises of tomorrow and someday lying between you. Your thoughts will turn to him then, in those moments as you prepare to leave forever this place that you had shared. Maybe you will return again to the cave, to sit alone in the shattered silence broken only by the steady drips of water and memories that seep from the rocks.
In your mind there will be hushed voices, whispering the words of masters from long before their time, and there will be chants, and clapping, and the faint echo of haunting saxophone music, but when you stop remembering long enough to listen, you�ll realize that you and your heartbeat and the slowly falling water are the cave�s only occupants. The ghosts you hear exist only within your memory.
Maybe you�ll find the charred remains of a smoky campfire, or the broken end of an abandoned pipe, and it will remind you of one who had been lost along the years. Too many will have been taken from you by then. One by death, one by expulsion, one by his own cowardice, and too many others by their isolating grief, or their crippling fears.
Maybe, by then, you will be the only one left.
They will haunt you, each of them in their own way, as you make your way through your life. You will see them from behind as you walk down the street, but when you catch up to them and look at their faces, they will be someone else. You will hear them as you drift off to sleep, and you�ll call out to them, but there will be no reply. Mostly, you will see them in the young boys you pass by on your way to work, to home, to wherever your road is taking you. By then they won�t be boys anymore. They will be the doctors and the lawyers and the bankers they were always meant to be. But you will see other boys, and you will think of them, and you will miss those days, miss them with an intensity you never thought possible.
You will wonder sometimes how you ever made it through the turmoil of that year. Emotions are so much stronger, so much more potent, when felt by the young, and you will wonder how you ever survived the roller coaster of disappointment leading to elation, leading to heartbreaking grief, leading to a painful numbness that will never really leave you.
You know that there is no forgetting these days, not for any of you, but you also know that the others will move beyond it. As their lives spin around them, they will be carried along by the inexorable velocity of change, and they will move on, in a way they never thought was possible. You don�t believe the same is true of yourself. You know these days have left their mark on you, but you would hesitate to call yourself scarred, because scars are wounds from the past that have healed with time.
There are times when you believe your wounds will never heal.
You cry at night now, when you are alone, and you wonder how you ever became so weak. You wonder what the others would think of you, and you decide that it doesn�t really matter anymore. They have their own wounds, their own tears that they hide from each other, and from you. There was a time when there were no secrets between you, but those days were lost with him, and you know that they, like he, will never return.
You will see his ghost reflected in the frosted windows of passing cars. You will hear his voice in the whispering of the autumn breeze through the dying trees. You will feel his memory in the brisk chill of a winter night, as you walk the lonely streets with only your footsteps for company.
Time will pass, and your life will continue to revolve around the walls you have built around yourself, but the shadow of these days will never leave you.