Meredith Scribbles

I made it through my college graduation without crying.

I never expected to cry in the first place, but my throat grew suspiciously tight as I walked through a wall of draping black curtains that transported me from the dingy underground halls of my university’s athletic center to a scene of splendor I didn’t recognize. The large college gymnasium, so stereotypical in its athleticism, vanished in a dark haze, replaced by an unfamiliar arena framed by a thousand friends and family members. Projections and banners accompanied a stage assembled on the basketball court, and folding chairs occupied by my peers and professors lined the wax floors.

As my graduating class filed in to the surging notes of the processional, my emotions betrayed me in a way I didn’t expect. It wasn’t unusual for me to listen to orchestral music on my way to class or during a stroll around the pond. It added a sense of wonder and glory to the mundane. If the world was simply set to music, the everyday would be a better place to live. What others might see as just an afternoon walk could become a beautiful moment in the story of my life if an invisible camera captured the evening light as I crested the bend to the swell of the key change. There never was a camera though so the potential for beautiful everyday moments was often lost on the general populace. But now to hear the orchestra broadcasted for the world to hear was like having the world finally see beauty the way I saw it. The solemnity of the occasion provided a glorious excuse for the audience to take in the grandeur of an everyday walk, suddenly made profound by the swelling symphony. We were graduating, and each golden note was here to capture it.

The music carried me to my seat in the front row, past faces I had come to know and love. The flowers and ferns arranged at the front of the stage and the professors in all of their regalia formally acknowledged the graduates’ existence. All of its beauty was for us. For me. At last, my university gave me the greatest gift they could—a celebration of my achievements—after years of feeling like my field of study required validation. My college experience was in no way perfect, but with the tinny recording of the orchestra playing and my head held high, my mind wiped out the imperfections as I chose to recognize the beauty in this season’s conclusion that I couldn’t see while I was experiencing it. I chose to live in the moment.

A whirl of handshakes, high-fives, and highlight-reel snapshots. A three-fingered salute. A self-declaring twirl. Poses and pictures and people I love all in one place. For the first time ever, both sides of my family crammed into one photo, and it didn’t matter that my sister barely spoke to me because for a single moment, everyone I loved sat at the same table.

The day dissolved in a golden rush of glory. Cheesecake followed mocktails until I ended up in the backseat surrounded by all my belongings as I sorted through the day’s photos. My city of three years disappeared unnoticed in the rearview mirror. The next time I looked up, we were rolling past the blooming orchards and azure waters of my home town.

Through it all, I didn’t cry.

Not until I turned on the Dr. Who finale I didn’t finish the night before.

I watched in silence as something beautiful came to an end:

The Doctor and his companion cling to any stable ground they can find as time and space threaten to rip them apart. For a few moments, they’re successful. Then—

A vortex of chaos and uncertainty.

Reality rips and unravels.

The future intervenes.

Separation is an uninvited visitor.

Just like that.

Before one moment can become another, one person is on one side of existence, and the other one is fenced off in a different world that can never be reached. Both know there is no returning, and yet they still stand with their palms flat against the wall as if reaching for the only physical support they can find. No matter how much they want to go back, they can never re-experience how collective together felt. And so they stand, hands pressed to the wall, unable to grapple with the truth that all that was is now lost.

I blinked.

Suddenly it wasn’t Rose, but me with my hand against the white drywall, searching for something that can never be experienced again. The numerous lives that intersected with mine have exploded in a spontaneous burst of new life shooting off in infinite directions. Each shard of stardust has its own path to take as it travels through space. One might pass another, but they will never all be together, never all in one place.

Just like that, the recent chapter of my life was over.

The finale arrived, and there wouldn’t be another season.

And finally the tears came.