My Friend

I bet we all have feelings and memories from high school that stick with us. For me these feelings have been dragged to the front lately and demanded examination. Like many young girls I had a best friend in elementary and high school. Beginning in fourth grade it seemed Josie and I were always together. We had sleep overs, we were comfortable in one another’s churches, we shared family reunions and we always vacationed together – to the beach, camping, and we even shared a trip to Hawaii when we were seventeen.

But when we hit high school there was a change – Josie became wildly popular. Her circle of friends included jocks, cheerleaders, majorettes, all the cool people. I was definitely shunt to the side. She and I remained friends, but within the ‘group’ she hung with, I was defiantly a ‘hanger on’. No one was really mean to me, but if I’d have vanished no one would have ever noticed.

After high school Josie married and had a baby right away while I went off to college and I’m guessing many of you know the feeling of true friends simply drifting apart. We lived in the same town but rarely if ever saw one another. Fast forward forty years and Josie and I were thrilled to get together and talk at our fortieth reunion. At the time, we were both anticipating retirement and we planned on seeing each other more.

Josie retired in June and I couldn’t wait for my retirement in December so we could have some long lunched getting reacquainted. Didn’t happen. Josie died January 9 from complications following routine surgery. She didn’t even see her sixtieth birthday. I was stunned. It just wasn’t her time, we were going to go to lunch and laugh and talk and …

We’ve all been told, especially as we’ve gotten older, not to put things off. But it bears repeating – don’t.

It all made me remember a poem I first read in one of Laura Ingles Wilder books,

Lost

Between sunrise and sunset

One golden hour set with sixty diamond minutes.

No reward offered, it is lost forever.

I wanted to share this with you but the story doesn’t stop there. Tomorrow I want to tell you about reconnecting with the others in the ‘group’ Josie had. One part of me just wanted to avoid them all as those old high school feeling rushed back. But we did reconnect, and we did some laughing for sure, and I was really happy I went.