RIP, My Friend

We were friends in Junior HIgh and we were friends in High School and then I never saw her again.  I don't remember why, or if there even was a why.  We just stopped being in one another's orbit.

Before our 20th High School Reunion, in 1989, I found he once again.  Would I see her at the party?  No, she said, her life was empty; she had no husband, no children; it didn't measure up to what she was sure everyone else would be sharing; she didn't want to be there, listening to that, feeling bad about herself.

I didn't press it.  I hung up the phone (yes, we actually spoke on the telephone back in the 20th century) and thought that the years hadn't changed her much.  She was still the glass half empty girl I'd listened to when we were teens. She played Janis Ian's odes to loneliness on her guitar, while I sat on the floor beside her.

She wasn't at the 40th Reunion, but so many others were that I forgot to wonder about her.  

I looked at the posts about the 50th Reunion, held last week, and saw her face on the In Remembrance poster.  I gasped and held my heart.  TBG muted the television and held my shoulders as I told him the only fact I had - my friend was dead.

An internet search brought up nothing.  I posted an inquiry on the Reunion's page and received an email from a friend, who heard from a friend, who heard from a friend.  She had married a wonderful man who cared for her as an awful, debilitating disease took her life.

Gone.  

It's so strange to have her occupying a piece of my self when, for decades, I hadn't considered her at all.  It's another reminder that tomorrow is not promised.  I'm going to bake brownies and send them to my children........ just because.