Xoot's absence realized

People seem to vanish from life like steam from a cooking pot into the air. At one moment they are a potent substance, able to satisfy and invigorate like the aromas of a bakery or a Jewish mother's kitchen.\nReturning to IU for a fourth and final year is a sobering ritual from which I'm sure many of my fellow seniors are starting to feel effects. One day I woke up and realized that in nine months, hopefully, I'd have a bachelor's degree from IU. And then it's the real world, non-MTV style. I now take freshmen around the theatre department, where I show them the building I've known for three years that, in four months, will be vacated for newer facilities.\nWalking through the halls of the theater -- now as a senior -- I saw old friends as apparitions of the past, telling stories and having histories the new students would never know. I now face the fact that those who brought me through these halls and were like gods to me as a new student are all but memories -- people I've not seen or heard from in years already.\nAbsence certainly does make the heart grow fonder, and I am now realizing what an impact some of those older students had on me.\nI am now saying goodbye to the last of the upperclassmen who stayed the summer in Bloomington, now graduates, about to leave for the real world. By the spring, I think all shall be gone. \nRecently, I said goodbye to a good friend who has been not only a good friend for the two years I've known him, but has also been an inspiring person to be close to. On Sunday, Aug. 26, he left for Chicago and it shall be a long time until I see him again, if at all.\nAnother friend will also be leaving come December. He will take shelter in the City of Angels and I will lose another of my most coveted friends, who not only has helped me through life at school, but a very happy life in college theater. But these are friends to whom I've had, or shall have the chance, to say a well-wished farewell. But Xoot is gone, and no goodbye was had.\nXoot, also known as the Doctor, was a god of yore. The Doctor was an exceptional human being. To be near him was to be around all of the members of the Rat Pack at once -- dynamic, entertaining, soulful.\nHe made an impression, and shall always be kept in my memory as a unique individual unmatched in the world, and no goodbye was said. That's how he wanted it. Open-ended was his style. Closure meant finality and nothing in life is so final.\nHe vanished like those aromas that we remember, but cannot grasp. When my class leaves these rolling hills and buildings I wonder if we, too, will be completely gone.\nAll I can hope is that I am someone's Xoot.