Oh, Michael.

I am happily married to my husband of 16 years. I have a really neat 10-year-old boy, a moderately successful career, and several really good friends. By contrast, college was a very rough time in my life. I had no idea how to be me, just could not get comfortable in my own skin. I left college behind for the most part. Thank GOD for my thirties! That said, I did register with classmates.com, and every so often check out the site to see who else has registered. This is how I learned that Michael Lawrence Maguire died. July 14, 2003. All these years later, why should this news bother me at all?

Over 20 years ago, when I was a 19-year-old freshman at The University of Maine at Machias, I met a 26-year-old junior named Michael Maguire. We went everywhere, did everything together, it seems. we rented an apartment (right next door to my ecology professor) the summer after my freshman year, to my mother's complete horror. He graduated midway though my sophomore year. It broke my heart, and I handled the separation very poorly. When I left Machias, he visited me in NY, then the separation was permanent. He left. No explanation, no goodbye, nothing. Just gone. I was 21 at the time.

Twice in the intervening years, I thought sure I saw him on the streets of New York City. It stopped me in my tracks. He made such an impression on me. I remember how he held a pencil, his handwriting, what he ate (and sometimes drank) for breakfast, the way he walked, wore a baseball cap, the car he drove. My forty-year-old self mourns the loss of that man anew. But in a different way. Not as the lovesick idiot I was then, who couldn't handle a hangnail. But with a little more sight. He was a good man, with a good heart. Somewhat haunted. Clever. Smart. Funny. VERY Irish. An Alice McDermott novel waiting to be written. I hope he found some peace. I wish I could have said goodbye.

r.