The Opposite of Loneliness

Marina Keegan died last weekend in a car accident at the age of 22. Before she died, she penned this stunning piece about community, love, possibility, for her fellow 2012 graduating classmates.

These moments especially did funny things to my heart:

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

and

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.

Rest well, Marina. With the rest of the world, I mourn the loss of the words you will not write, the possibility you no longer have.