Last June, my college roommate died.

She died at home. I was on a beach in Italy, sipping an Aperol spritz with family and friends. 

Her husband contacted me immediately, and when we spoke, her body had not yet been loaded into the ambulance. Dumfounded and crying, I ducked into a building for privacy and to escape the carefree sounds of the beach. Gorgeous Italian beach club servers approached me suspiciously, presumably to ask me to leave the employees-only hut. I guess it’s frowned upon to booger cry in an employee-only tiki shack surrounded by exquisite beach towels, but one look at my red, blotchy American face, and they left me alone.

My dear friend’s death, a combination of lifestyle and bad luck, was imminent. But no one expected death would come so suddenly. Or quite so cruelly. 

It had been weeks since we last spoke. When feeling down, which had become more frequent, she would not answer her phone or reply to texts. Instead, she would post memes on my Facebook page, like a prisoner carving an X into a wall to mark another day’s survival. Looking back, I think shame was just as much to blame for her death as the cancer and alcohol. Shame spread, as it does, throughout her body like venom, paralyzing her. On those darkest days, when returning a text was overwhelming, she posted funny memes.

But the last time we spoke, we laughed for hours. Mostly, we talked about dumb things we did in college. We were exceedingly relieved there were no smartphones back then. Our college highlight reels were tragically ordinary, interchangeable with nearly every other Gen X’r who went to college in the 80s: big hair, cheap beer, occasional walks of shame with contacts swimming inside two shot glasses. 

Decades later, my roommate remembered every detail of our antics. I forgot (or had the very good fortune to repress) almost all of the details from college. She, however, could whap out names, dates, places, and escapades of which I had no shred of recollection. During that phone call, we spoke only briefly about her cancer. She was already bobbing and drifting in a sea of regret, unable to quit the habits she knew were killing her. She wanted to laugh and needed relief, so we laughed.

Toward the end, her body became a human Jenga tower, her life precariously leaning and teetering toward a catastrophic end. Fate grew tired of granting time, eventually forcing all the players to make their final move. Her life was going to topple. Would it be the cancer? The cigarettes? The alcohol? Her own darkness? 

She was not a candidate for dying an achingly beautiful death, the kind where a soul drifts peacefully into eternity. Old age would never come for her. Instead, death would rock up, tires screeching. She would succumb without the grace she deserved. She knew it. We all knew it. But still. No one was ready. 

So there I was, stunned and grief-stricken, on a beach in Southern Italy. Twenty-some years ago, our daughter was a flower girl in my college roommate’s wedding. Now, my daughter was the bride. We were in Italy for our daughter’s wedding celebrations. The moment felt surreal: the blue sea, the joy, the shock, the grief, the friends, the family, and then, I’m ashamed to admit, the anger I felt toward my friend who had the nerve to up and die when I couldn’t be there. All these emotions snapped into one another like a tower of bricks. 

In a bolt of existential dread, I wondered if true happiness could ever truly exist. 

Is it a thing, pure happiness? Untainted joy? 

I tried to collect evidence that pure joy could be had, completely untarnished, unbruised, or marred by loss or sadness or worry or pain. I came up empty-handed. 

I think joy will always brush up next to sadness.

My joyful wedding was tinged with heartache because my in-laws didn’t like me. The birth of our children brought a wash of loneliness for my husband, who acutely missed his father, who died many years before we met. When we moved back to the USA after living in England for years, the searing pain of saying goodbyes gave way to the relief and deep sense of belonging that accompanied the return to familiarity, family, and friends. I am now familiar with the joy, happiness, pride, sadness, and worry that flood over me each time we drop one of our four kids off at college.

Life is messy. 

In my youth, I mistakingly assumed that age and wisdom would act like life’s janitor, keeping life’s chaos orderly and tidy. I thought that age and wisdom would somehow manifest as kegs of that weird-smelling shaving concoction that custodians sprinkle onto vomit, making mess easier to sweep away. But the older I get, the wiser I get, the more I realize there is no bucket of shavings to absorb life’s messy bits: life is messy. It always will be. That is part of the game. 

Instead of wishing there was a shortcut to avoiding the messiness of life, we’d be better served to learn to sit with the discomfort. We can clean up what we can. We can acknowledge most things we cannot control. We can try to accept our humanness. 

There are no quick fixes.

So there, in sunny, idyllic Italy, I had to grieve the catastrophic and untimely death of my funny, thoughtful friend, a wife and mother, and also wholeheartedly celebrate my daughter’s marriage. 

I wish someone had told me sooner that life would be this complicated. 

No wonder I death scroll Instagram, searching in vain for the one inspirational interior photo, the one meme, or the one targeted ad that will clear my mind or at least remove all my wrinkles. No wonder I find myself avoiding as a form of coping. No wonder I often feel like a husk of my former self. 

I don’t want to live in a world with only heartbreak or only joy. I want and need both. I signed up for a messy life.

I want to be tightly connected to people. I want their joy and blessings to spill onto and permanently mark my life. I want people in my life who happily wipe their good juju all over me. I want to feel electrifying bursts of joy (as a friend refers to them). Also? I want to be trusted with other people’s grief and worry and fear. I want to be able to trust people with mine. I want to help ease the burdens of others. I accept I’ll hurt; I chose to love.

Life is messy. 

Our job isn’t to keep our lives tidy and clean. Our job is to make a masterpiece from the beautiful and meaningful shards of joy, sorrow, pain, awe, overwhelm, bliss, love, and laughter. In our decades together, my friend gifted me countless pieces of my life’s messy but marvelous mosaic.

Her life will always remind me that sadness and joy can be two sides of the same coin.