The new year is a poignant time for many people. Even with its arbitrary function, it serves as a distinctive turning point in our segments of time.

This year I’ve been reflecting on the fullness of life. The deviation from backloading my dreams and ambitions, rather, realizing that it has to be done in this moment if it is to be done at all.

In the same vein, I’ve been appreciating the bevy of experiences I’ve had over in Japan. I can’t say I’ve been short of learning moments— highs and lows alike. It’s moments like walking up that stupid fucking hill on the way to my apartment that I can reflect on how much happened this past year, as I stagger out of breath looking like a baked ham.

It’s been particularly funny how serendipity has shined its bright little face in my darker moments. The sheer improbability of moments like meeting a random islander in a tiny snack bar and their kid had gone to college in your hometown. Or whatever else I’m reaching for but can’t remember clearly right now. It jolts the soul awake like a kiss from an eager hummingbird.

I caught myself thinking of Frank today. An older man I worked with as a custodian down at Southern Oregon University. It’s been nearly a decade since then— which is a wild thing to consider. But Frank, for the short time I knew him, left an incredible impact on me. Even if it wasn’t what he intended. While working through the western side of the new dorms, he remarked that he had never felt like he’d found his place in society. That for whatever reason, he’d never really fit. To this day, it’s one of the most heartbreaking admissions I’ve heard. Doubly so as I had been twenty years old listening to a man in his fifties. I didn’t have much to say to that— I think it was more important to listen than reply. But on a deep level, I had understood what he was saying. And before Southern Oregon and the following years, I’d have been tempted to say the same.

I’ve had passing waves of melancholy in my life. Some taller than others as they crash over me. But ultimately, I always shoot back up to the surface. They can seem immense, terrible things, these waves. They crash down and the world is swallowed up. You are swallowed up. And all that’s left is some measure of confused darkness.

I’d found early on that my stubborn side lent itself to escaping the waves. I’d find the smallest speck of brightness and follow it— damned if I wasn’t going to leverage it against the consuming dark.

But not everyone does. Or, rather, some eventually find it too much to keep searching for that speck.

I had changed jobs and returned to being a barista again when I had another former coworker let me know that Frank had passed away three weeks after I’d left the job. She described it in a secretive manner, which led me to believe Frank had taken his own life. The comments he’d made, the solitary lifestyle, and the growing distance from his daughter seemed like weights he couldn’t shake.

Years after, I’d gone to an intuitive at the behest of my boss (who had the most wonderfully eclectic tastes of anyone I’ve ever met). I’d consider myself a skeptic who deep down would love to see a definable moment of magic (although maybe that’s the thing with magic— it’s the undefinable where it’s found). But as I sat on that couch and listened to the women tell me to take everything she said with a “grain of salt” I did my best to relax.

She said some general curiosities to start. But the session took a turn when she mentioned there was a man who was watching over me. She said it was someone I had worked with. Had the heart of a child and had enjoyed life in a simple manner. That all he was doing was watching on as I had my adventures to give a thumbs up and say “keep at it.” Initially I had been pretty confused because up to that point I hadn’t worked with any older men (that I could recall). And I hadn’t ever told anyone about Frank. But then it came back like a snapped rubber band. Frank of Southern Oregon. With his trailer out in the woods, his two stroke dirt bike and love of burritos. I remembered all right.

Even if the intuitive can be disregarded for her reading— I’d say the remembrance of a man who believed he never belonged has its own merit.

It’s on those walks back from the grocery store— up that stubborn hill and all it’s incline that I think occasionally of Frank, a thumbs up, and a reminder to enjoy the little things.