Lost Without LOST

I am grieving. I learned Sunday night that some very good friends of mine died recently. They died either on an island, in a plane crash or in some other way that was not completely explained to me. I’ve been very sad ever since because I will miss them. I have cried for them (went to work with swollen eyelids today). I have questioned their purpose in life. I have speculated as to what really happened to them even though I am clearly not to know or understand. I am happy for them because I believe that they are now at peace. And they are with the ones they love. But my friends Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurley, Charlie, heck… even Rose and Bernard… I will miss all of them. We’ve been through a lot together.

I get attached to TV shows and characters and I am sad when we must part ways. If it is my decision to leave, I can handle it. Like my friends on Wisteria Lane. I decided after spending a year with them that I had too many other friends and I had to cut some people out of my life. So, Susan, Gabby, Linette and Edie had to go. I was okay with that. I most likely won’t even catch up with them when it’s time for them to say goodbye to the rest of their friends. We’ve drifted apart – and I’m okay with that. It happens.

It happened with me and Jack Bauer. Gosh, I loved him. He was so heroic! For seven years I watched him save the world and cheat death. But I also saw him lose a lot. He lost his wife, his girlfriend, another girlfriend and several friends at the CTU. His job was too dangerous. So many things kept happening that it finally just got to be too much for me. Do I wish him well? Of course I do. He’s Jack Bauer! But I had to end our friendship. He stuck around for another year, but I just couldn’t do it anymore.

I can remember back to the first time I realized that TV friends I had come to know and care about would be leaving my life. I knew these wacky roommates – Jack, Janet and Teri. Their meddlesome landlord was always causing problems for them and they were always getting their wires crossed in some zany misunderstanding – usually revolving around someone’s mistaken assumption that two people were having sex. Anyway, one day Jack fell in love and moved in with a girl named Vicky. Janet got married and moved away. Teri became a nurse in Hawaii. The threesome would be no more. Sure, they might keep in touch, but the dynamic they shared would never exist among them again. I had an opportunity to remain friends with Jack and Vicky, but it just wasn’t the same. They only stuck around for a year.

Then there was the Keaton family. Oh, how I cried when their oldest son, Alex, who I used to pretend to make out with, would be moving to New York for a job on Wall Street. Had I meant nothing to him all of those years I followed his life? He just left! I was crushed! Once he moved away, I began hanging out with this group of misfits who spent all of their time in a Boston bar. The hung out for what seemed like weeks at a time at this bar. I’m not sure any of them actually worked. Well, one guy was a mailman. He always wore his uniform.

At some point, I became friends with a group of kids from Bayside High. I am embarrassed to admit how much time I spent with those guys. I even hung out with them a little when they went to college. I was older than they were so really I should not have spent the kind of time with that that I did. We eventually went our separate ways. I kept up with one girl who moved to Beverly Hills and hung out with another group of students I knew – although, I think she got a boob job before she moved. I followed one guy when he became a detective in the NYPD. One girl ended up as a stripper in Vegas – she was pretty gross. I don’t think she had a boob job. I had to opportunity to see her dancing and shaking and I’m pretty sure hers were real.

Eventually I lost touch with those kids. I moved on to this group of friends in New York. They were MUCH cooler than the Bayside High students. These guys hung out in a coffee shop most of the time and had really cool hair. They also slept with each other a lot and in different pairings. I was getting kind of tired of them so when we parted ways I wasn’t too upset when they left.

Now, I was very upset to lose my other New York friends although they were really horrible, horrible people. Our friendship ended when they were sentenced to jail for one year for breaking a Good Samaritan law. For many years, Jerry, Elaine, Kramer and George were just awful to their respective boyfriends and girlfriends and others with whom they came into contact. But they were sarcastic and funny and I knew I would miss them.

Another group of people I hated to see go were the Soprano family in New Jersey. I’m not sure why I liked that family. They were believed to be in the mob. The more time I spent with them, I had a bad feeling that someone would die that I didn’t want to see die. I don’t think that happened. Actually, I have no idea what happened to them. One minute they were there and the next they weren’t. It was like, everything just faded to black and they would never be heard from again. Weird.

But the six years that I knew the Kwons, Mr. Locke, Desmond and the gang were very good years. They always kept me guessing. They made me angry. They made me think (usually I hate that). They made me think about spirituality and about good and evil – real heavy stuff. Things I don’t normally think about on Tuesday evenings. Things that, in their absence, I am unlikely to ponder going forward.

And these people didn’t simply leave me. They died. I had invested so much into them. I had gotten to know them. To care about them. And they are gone now. I know, I know. I’ll make new friends. Probably sometime in the fall, I’ll be introduced to a whole new crop of friends. But it won’t be the same. It won’t be those people in that group. I don’t even know yet if I’ll want to make room in my life for any new friends. It gets pretty time consuming and I have two kids and husband who need my attention.

Plus, I’ve already got plenty of other friends. There’s the group I hang out with from Dunder Mifflin. They are pretty funny, but I work in HR and the things they do make me very uncomfortable. It’s just not appropriate for the workplace. Then there’s Ted, Barney and their friends who frequently get together for drinks over at McLaren’s. I like them, but I’m getting pretty annoyed with them. Ted is making me guess who the mother of his kids will be. I want answers now – stop teasing me! I guess my best friend right now would have to be Liz Lemon. She reminds me of a much cooler version of myself. And what a life – she works at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York for a guy who looks like Alec Baldwin.

So I guess I do have people I can still spend time with. I will just have to move on and be thankful for the time we spent together. I’ll have to enjoy my summer outside with all of my real, actual friends. If you are one of them, I will have to lean on you in this time of grief.