I drank a lot of water my first week of college.

I drank a lot of water because my room was at one end of a long hall, and the bathroom was at the other. My mission was to meet everyone in between. Drinking so much water gave me frequent excuses to make the trip: to either fill my new University of Oregon mug or to empty my bladder. The strategy worked, and the mission was accomplished.

Kevin's door was often open. I remember the tall, red-headed long jumper reading on his bed, his long hair dangling before his eyes. He'd be listening to Alice in Chains or Pearl Jam or Soundgarden -- this was 1993, grunge's year -- on a huge chrome ghetto blaster about the size of a small car. He looked surly, I thought. He looked like he was from a big city.

I was wrong, of course. He wasn't from the city, but from a small town hidden in the Oregon mountains. And he wasn't surly. He was never surly, assuming or arrogant. He was indescribably kind and happy. Yes, yes, he was always happy.

That this description is so inadequately long on tell and short on show grieves me.

The two of us and five others from our hall comprised a tight group of friends this year. We ate meals together, we played games together, we watched movies together. Every Thursday and then every Sunday we crowded into a dorm room to watch The Simpsons together, or bust. No matter how bad a week, no matter how bad I felt, I could depend on that weekly camaraderie to lift my spirits, and I'd survive another week.

The group was static and dependable, and few of us had friends outside of the group. That was okay, though, because each other's company was all any of us needed. It wasn't like at Northwestern, where circles of friends are fluid and overlapping, and loyalties often depend on who is sleeping with whom and who is whose editor.

Our sophomore year, we moved en masse to another hall, but we were still tight. Kevin's girlfriend from high school, Chauntal, arrived as a freshman, adding to our group a maternal influence. When she wasn't reminding us to study, she was chiding us for playing Frisbee golf every night.

I should remember more, even after two years, but no anecdotes, no pithy turns of speech of theirs are coming to mind. When my grandfather died this year, I felt the same lapse. Now as then, all I remember is an essence they shared: a constant positive state of being.

I do remember Kevin's laugh; I remember his frequent excitement. Making him laugh was no Gargantuan task, but it was always an intense reward to hear a laugh launch from his chest and watch an enormous grin come across his face.

And it made me smile to see them.

I tell you this story to tell you another one. Tomorrow.