3/13
A week late, yes, but I was on time on the day.
A friend of mine left the world on that date last year. I didn’t find out till a little later.
This year I sent all the condolences early in the day. And I had a gift that arrived on the 11th to the youngest person with a broken heart. So she could have something to smile about.
The one who broke the news to me wanted me to tell old friends. One in particular. He keeps asking me if I did.
Look. This friend was so into abusive boyfriends and complaining to me about them and not, say, changing her situation that I quit returning her calls.
I heard from my recently passed friend that the friend had gotten married. To a guy with the first name of her first boyfriend. A guy who happened to smile at me after they broke up in a way that made her lose her religion. You know, the whole if I can’t have him, neither can you thing.
In any event, I do know she changed her name and had a couple kids with the second guy by that name. Maybe she did that full circle from good guy to abusive fuckers to good guy. Let’s hope.
I did fuck up a bit and let the cat out of the bag with a friend of yesteryear. Whom I told hey, she was private and I haven’t told anyone, but she’s gone and that’s why she isn’t answering your message.
Well.
I got texts from two friends like whaaaat we just heard.
I was terrified for a minute. But they were so nice. They loved her and knew I had to be hurting.
Like, I forget that people in this world are good. And that they loved someone I loved, even better.
It sucks that my friend is gone. But I kind of got this interesting little extended network that I didn’t really have before.
The gift I gave involved a ladybug. The gift I wanted to give involved a camera.
But we both knew this person at different phases of their life and made different associations. So much as I wanted to buy MY preferred present, I gifted the other.
That’s the part that’s hardest to swallow. That this person wanted so badly to know more about my friend’s past. And she truly thought she’d never get it.
But then one day I messaged out of the blue, and she said I was just telling my husband that I didn’t know any of her friends to even ask questions of. And here you come, telling me all these great stories and keeping her memory alive for me.
Seems like we needed each other and would have never known it. So, gotta say I am SO glad for social media and remembering this then-2-year-old’s name all this time so I could look her up and strike up this beautiful little relationship.
I would never say things happen for a reason. But I will say that you can create good. And, if you’re lucky, you can find enough motivation to get you to the next day, and the next, and so on.