Guilt is such a dirty word.
Why should I do anything besides stay away?!

I've had this dream for a while, where best friends survive all kinds of trials and tribulations. They grow up, as I have learned to act, and blossom into great people.

Then comes graduate school and those friends stick it out. Every once and a while, a phone call during midterms or finals, since we go to different schools because of different asperations. It seems that classes are full of pressure and all those best friends need is a friendly voice to tell them that it's fine; that just a little longer and it will be over. That faith in them is strong. That doubting their knowledge is futile. Then the special day and all laugh at the doubt.

Those friends separate, you know, go in their own direction, but never loss touch. Careers-a-plenty and down the line, marriage.

I still want to be a brides-maid.

Fastforward, into the distant future. The pitter-patter of childrens feet. The best friends have already grown into a family. They have had their arguements and they've made up. They handled depressions, disasters and diapers. They've done everything that siblings do without referring to one mother, but to each their own, respectively.

Then, once a year, since they all live on different plains (don't think I'm stupid, this is a pun)of existence and must travel far and wide, they come together on that special day (or week). Its been choosen the following year and all agree to meet. Days off are asked at work to the point that the bosses already know when that day is coming around a year in advance. There's the jokes.

And the "rub".

The adopted family comes together and the children are at play in the back yard around the barbaque pit and every once-in-a-while, someone yells, "Get away from there, you'll get burned!"

I can't count the children because they fly by as we used to when we were their age. They are blurrs in the wind.

Almost as fast as dust in the wind (pun).

The spouses are inside talking because they are shunned from the conversation because they were after the fact. After the family was born out of fire and ice. But there are a few that survived the trials and tribulations as well next to the friends. And they sit and talk.

They are honorary.

The best friends sit at a picnic table, talking about old days. They laugh, cry, remember, yell, discuss, argue, etc. Its a familial friendship. The sad hour comes where they must separate for another year.

Tears.

But they know that there are still phones and emails to be had. Video emails of baby's first steps and baptisms. They'll see each other grow from far away, but on that special day (or week), they never are much older than the first time the best friends came together in the eyes of those around them. The story doesn't end there. It continues into a different lifetime.

Like Shakespeare wrote, "To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in the sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause..." (Hamlet: III, I 63-68)

Fitting, for what dreams may come now?

He also said, what applies to this dream, "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themsleves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day." (King Henry V.: IV, III 60-66)

But, what do I know. Hocus Pocus!