Lessons Learned

I got a letter last week.

A real bonafide letter from an actual person. No shit. It actually happened. My mailbox wilted temporarily with the shock. (visualize that)

It was from a very old friend of mine....whom I'll call Worker Bee. Someone I had met in Jr High (middle school to most of you out there) and continued to keep in contact with even after I had moved away to start high school in another town. We stayed in touch for years, but eventually lost touch after the birth my daughter 9 years ago, while she was pregnant.

I was shocked to hear from her. I was so happy! Immediately, thoughts of our old chummy school days passes through my mind. Thoughts of the bad joke wars we used to have made my cheeks plump with grinning. I felt the old fellowship all over again - all before I read more than 3 words in her letter. I wanted to know everything immediately, and I mean EVERYTHING - RIGHT NOW.

She told me that my cousin had died.

My cousin and I had the same name (with the exception of our last names) and I had looked her up a couple of years ago. Nicole, Worker Bee and I were all friends in school along with the usual gaggle of people with intermingled with, but to me, those two were my world.

Nicole even lived down the street from me and we had spent many hot, hazy, summer days playing outside and doing a lot of things we shouldn't have. We talked. We danced We roller skated. We did make up. We dressed up. We strutted. We talked about boys. We went swimming in the river. We would walk for miles around our neighborhood just so we wouldn't have to be at home. She was ever confident and self assured. She is the one that taught me not to give a damn what anyone else thought of me. She was naturally beautiful. She was the girl I always wanted to be....and she was dead, and no one had called me.

Worker Bee had written to me on the day of her funeral and that's how I found out....but I didn't get her letter until a month after she had written it(I would like to thank the postman for his continued ineptitude - and my husband for forgetting to give my my mail when I came back from NM).

I was very upset...not because she had told me in her letter, but because no one had called me....and because I had put off calling her for months and months...simply because I find it hard to pick up the phone sometimes. It's true that no one had called me, but I hadn't called them either, and that didn't make me feel any better. I felt/feel exceedingly guilty - because I knew she had been sick, and I didn't call.

I went to Childhood Town and laid flowers on Nicole's grave this past weekend. I had the florist make up the flowers especially for her - pink if you please, sir - and with a little card to with them. I was struck with a delima. How was I supposed to say everything I wanted to say on that little card? Exactly what could I say on that sad scrap of paper? I struggled. The florist looked at me expectantly, waiting.

I drove down the old historic streets marked with beautiful Inns and B&B's and lovely old fashioned restaurants and eventually found the town cemetery and after getting directions to her plot from Worker Bee, I found her. She was right by a majestic old tree, in the shade, with flowers all over her grave. He birthday had been the day before and it was obvious that even in death, she was still deeply loved, especially by the 3 children she left behind...16,12,and 4.

I don't know what to say or do in times like this. I was blessedly alone. I stared at her marker and grinned. I had never realized that she had dropped her maiden name instead of her middle name when she gotten married. I had done the same thing....just one more thing to tie us together....and I gave her her flowers, and I whispered to her, and I cried and I wanted to scream and I cried and then....then....because I hate crying...and I especially hate crying in public, I pulled myself together....and I went to visit another old friend ....Worker Bee.

...and Worker Bee and I laughed and ate and I met her husband and her children and we laughed and talked and looked at old pictures and I felt the old kinship still there. The old confidences whispered still echoed and we exchanged new secrets and we told more bad jokes and I had to tear myself away to go home.

I left Childhood Town behind knowing that though one old friendship was gone, there was another there for me.

I left Childhood Town with only a few flowers and a miniature card to cover the earth that covers one of the only true friends I've ever had.

To the Lady who taught me to dance as a child, may you dance among the clouds.