A breakup — what all adolescents fear yet think will never happen with a first love. No one embarks on their first venture into love with the thought that it likely will not last forever. We meet; we’re overwhelmed with these emotions for the first time; we’re convinced that something so strong, so beautiful, so pure cannot possibly die. How can perfection perish? How can this intensity ever diminish? All we want to be with our love, and we desire that with the same unquestionable necessity we crave food or water. The sound of her voice is more beautiful than just about any piece of music we’ve heard. The faint scent of her perfume that might linger after we’ve sat beside her in the cafeteria keeps us enraptured until we drift into sleep many hours later.

All I want to do is just sit here
And write it all down and rest for a while

Sinead O’Conner “The Emperor’s New Clothes”

How does that perfection dissolve, inevitably into tears for one or both of us? How does something so dazzling become so dark? How does such joy transform into such sorrow? It seems impossible until it happens, and once it happens, and we resign ourselves to the loss, it seems unavoidable.

It’s been forty years since I went through this myself. I met her at church band camp (we had church everything: dances, basketball games, talent shows), but she lived a full 100 miles away. That first love was a week of intensity followed by months of letters and the occasional phone call until her feelings for me dissolved. I don’t remember much about it all but I do remember how sure I was that it was something more real than it really was.

We realize our kids will go through the same thing at some point, but it still hurts to watch.