Wow. I can’t believe it. I’m sitting here, I’m shaking my head, my mind is everywhere, I can’t talk—well, not comprehensibly, anyway—my eyes are sweating—if you know what I mean—and I just cannot force myself, cannot bring myself, to accept the fact that some of the greatest people I’ve ever known are about to leave me, are about to leave all of us, are about to start new lives and meet new people and experience new things and do new jobs without help from any of us. Some of my best friends. Some of the people I’ve grown up with. Some of the people who were, to me, the brothers and sisters I never had. Leaving. Growing. Graduating.

I sat there in the auditorium, stunned, in awe at what I was seeing in front of me. Faces on stage smiling, the same faces I had seen years earlier when I was still the ‘new kid’ from Arizona, the faces on people I had grown to recognize as instantly as the closest members of my immediate family. I saw them walking across the stage, shining—beaming—as they reached for the scroll of paper that ended one section of their lives and marked the beginning of an entirely new tale. I watched as they sat next to the peers they had been so close to for so long, their eyes betraying the deep, bittersweet melancholy that echoed in tune with every bar of Pomp and Circumstance. And then, there, in the first seat of the last row in the school auditorium—there, where on the stage directly in front of me the Seniors of the Class of 2003 were saying goodbye—I realized: they are my family. Our family.

They were our older siblings for eleven years, the guys and girls who would watch out for us and tell us about all the intricacies of the year ahead—the places to go, the amount of homework we’d have, the teachers to watch out for, the kind of soda to drink, the right brand of chips to buy. We listened, wide-eyed, the all-too-perfect nonchalance of our nods trying to hide our fear of the coming year. We just knew it would be terrible, that we’d have stacks and stacks of worksheets to do, that the teachers would hate us, that we obviously wouldn’t do anything right. But, deep down, we always knew one thing: they’d be there for us whenever we needed them, whenever we tripped and fell and needed a hand up.

But now, they’re leaving, off to get new careers, to get married, to get rich. And we just have to sit by and watch them go. I’m starting now to think about my future, about the fact that high school may actually not last forever. I’m starting to realize that my life, too, is about to change, that it won’t be too long before the same Pomp and Circumstance is playing for me and my class, that it won’t be too long before I have to walk across that stage with the same stride and bounce and vigor.

But mostly, I just think about them leaving.

And as they go off to Austin or College Station or Dallas or London or Hong Kong, to California or New York, to places all over the world, I wish they could remember just one thing as they venture down whatever road Providence takes them: that they have already made a difference in this world, that they have already written some of the most amazing chapters in the stories of their lives, that they’ll always have a “family” when they need one. For, now, I realize, they are the ones who need guidance, they are the ones who need affection—they are the ones with the wide eyes taking the baby steps into a new and unknown world.

And as they take those steps, as they stumble and fall, as they get back up and keep going, as they write the next chapters in that story we call life, I want them to know that one, big, all-important thing—that we love them.

Goodbye, Seniors of 2003. You will be missed. Always.