Where Are They Now?

Hello my Blogville friends. Thanks for joining me today as I sip my green tea with a little honey and lemon. I’m not sure that I will be able to write this blog, and even if I do, I’ll need to decide if it is a good idea publish it on my website. What I do know is that I need to write it. Writing helps me process things. If you are reading this blog you know what my decision is. NOTE: I offer you a Trigger Alert for grief and loss. Please consider your frame of mind before continuing to read.

As a preface to the rest of this blog, please know that I am a person who randomly tries to reconnect (and hopefully stay connected) with people who have crossed life paths with me. For example, I recently reconnected with one of my bridesmaids and now we chat monthly on the phone. I honestly enjoy finding old friends, seeing who and how they are now, and attempting to keep in touch. Sometimes it is enough just to find and connect with a person once, other times we stay connected and keep in touch. Yep, I’m that person!

So my story begins in Kindergarten about 60 years ago when I met my friend whom I will call J. We became fast friends and instantly ‘pretend sisters’ as each of us was cursed with having only brothers. J and I did everything together, well, as much as our parents would let us do. We lived close enough to each other, and to our school, that we would walk together pretty well every day. There was a fountain between our two addresses on the route to school where we would usually meet, and then walk the rest of the way together. In those days town children did not have a bus, nor did our parents drive us to school. In my case, my parents did not even own a car until I was 16 years old.

Our walks were fraught with the magic of children’s conversations making unrealistic plans about what our futures would look like. We planned that our houses would be across the street from each other, if not right next door, so our children could play together. Our husbands would be best friends or maybe even brothers! We wished for puppies and had to settle for goldfish. We wished for new bikes, she got one and I got my brother’s used one, and our bike adventures began. 

We would walk holding hands and swinging our arms in perfect tandem with each other. In the late spring as we passed a hillside house with a huge rolling lawn, we would look at each other and run screaming to the top before tumbling down together. The resulting grass stains hardly showed on our navy school uniforms but the elbows of our white blouses often gave us away. I am still amazed today how our mothers managed to get those blouses back to a perfect white every time, even the elbows! In the winter, naturally the draw to slide down that same rolling, then snow covered, lawn/hill was equally irresistible. Those walks to school were filled with the magic of young girls’ imaginations every single day. 

Even the best of friends have disagreements and we were no different. My fondest memories are of how we would use our parents as ‘weapons’ in our little ‘fights’. Her father, a food wholesaler, and my father, a railway employee were deployed in our imaginations to make the other’s life miserable. J threatened that she would have her father stop selling my family food so that we would starve to death unless I would acknowledge she was right about whatever we were arguing about at that moment. I, also looking to be right would inform her that my father would stop the supply trains where her father got the food rendering his wholesale shelves empty, and causing his business to fail. Our childhood omnipotence was rampant on the rare occasions we fought.

One of my favourite stories about J and I is the time that, in addition to Sunday services, we had to attend a Mass on our own as part of our Catholic Education curriculum, maybe it was for Lent or something, I’m not really sure. So one day, walking home together after school, we could see that there was a Mass going on by the number of cars in the parking lot. People were still going in so we knew it hadn’t started yet and we looked at each other and spontaneously decided to attend the Mass to complete our assignment. We would be the first ones in our class to achieve the ‘Attend Mass’ goal and we could proudly ‘tick that box’. So in we went, in our school uniforms, and took a seat in one of the pews. 

People in the church that day seemed quite sad, so we mirrored their sad faces. We guessed that they were not happy about attending an extra Mass either. People stood up and we followed suit, though they really blocked our view of the main aisle. We caught a glimpse of a shiny box draped in a white cloth rolling up the aisle but had no idea what that box might be for. I am pretty empathetic as a person, even back then, so I found myself tearing up at the increasing sobbing sounds filling the church. We sat through the Mass, even squeezing around that shiny box to receive communion, and snuck out a side door once the Mass was over.

Obviously these were the ‘days before cell phones’ so our mothers were quite upset with us by the time we got home. Apparently our dads had been trying to find us when we had not arrived home after school as expected. Not surprisingly, no one thought to check for us at the church  service. In hindsight, no one but the teacher was yet even aware of the new class assignment to attend an weekday Mass.

I remember explaining the class assignment to my parents and letting them know how weird it was to go to a Mass on a weekday. I asked them what was in the box because J and I were hoping they would open it and let us see but, to our disappointment, it had remained closed. I’m sure you can imagine my reaction when they explained what a funeral mass was, and delicately, what was in the box. The worst part at the time? The teacher did not let us count it as our Mass commitment. If I am not mistaken (it has been a while) I think we just ended up attending an after school Mass as a class. That funeral mass was J’s and my introduction to loss, and people’s reaction to loss. 

Speaking of loss, J moved on to a private school in grade nine and despite our tears and promises to remain best friends, life changed for us both. Her school was in a different community, and I cannot honestly recall if we even exchanged one letter or birthday card, despite our commitment to the idea of keeping in touch. As is the way of life, our commitment waned and it was many, many years later that J and I reconnected. I know she was invited, but I cannot definitively recall if she was at my wedding.

I think it was about ten years ago when I remembered that J resided in the large city that I would be attending for work, so I randomly reached out to her through social media, and we were able to get together. She came to collect me from my hotel and we spent some time on her sailboat, an adventure I had never been on before. At this point I had a growing family in Northern Ontario and she remained unmarried and living in Southern Ontario. I just love how the years melt away when spending time with childhood friends. Despite our promise to stay in touch, life got in the way, and we lost touch again.

Many years later I was visiting with one of my children and his family down south and I reached out to J again as they were now living in her city. She met my son, his wife and their new baby, then she and I went off for brunch. We spent the rest of the afternoon reminiscing. She showed me where she worked and we went to her gated community for tea so I could see her apartment/condo. It was a wonderful visit. 

About a year later we reconnected again as her brother had passed away and she would be coming north for his service/internment. I went up to the small community we had grown up in to attend the service. I met J’s friend, A, that she had travelled up with, and met some of her relatives and friends of her family. It was a peaceful event followed by a luncheon at a local restaurant. I got to know a few of the people who had attended the service and we shared some stories and laughter. When I had to leave to drive home J came outside and we hugged. She promised to contact me when she would be coming up to settle the estate and sell her family home within the coming weeks or months and I promised to make the short drive up and help her or even just to visit. We hugged again and I left for the drive home. This was last month.

A couple of weeks ago I was staying overnight in North Bay and contacted another ‘old’ friend to see if we could get together. We met for tea at a local restaurant and had a great visit despite the years between seeing each other. We talked about J and the loss of her brother as well as the fact that J and I had gotten the chance to see each other again. We talked about our J’s and my plan to get together upon her return to manage her brother’s estate. My North Bay friend and I also talked about getting together again when I would be passing through the next time. 

Here is the possible grief and loss trigger. Earlier this week I got a long distance call from J’s friend, A, who had come up with my friend for her brother’s funeral. Thinking J was driving, and so her friend was calling, I expected her to say they were on their way north to deal with the estate. Instead, J’s friend told me that J is gone, that she passed away. Fraught with disbelief I barely registered the details of what had happened to J. I can honestly say that I did not fully believe the friend until I received a link to the obituary and funeral information from her in my inbox. What her friend said is true, J is gone. The promise of seeing her again, is gone, in an instant, leaving me with a wish. I wish I had stayed longer after her brother’s funeral, that I had kept in touch more, and that I had told her what a good friend she had been when we were children. 

My message to you? Look around you, look at your life and see who mattered/matters then and now? Can you find those people or that one person? I am so grateful, despite the circumstances of losing her brother, to have had those precious hours with my friend before she passed so suddenly and unexpectedly. I am grateful to have had the chance to have a cup of tea with my other friend in North Bay, and I hope to have many more cups of tea with her. I am grateful to chat with friends by phone regularly and to keep up with their lives while sharing the details of my life with them. To use a pasta reference, we do not know if we have a strand of spaghetti or an elbow macaroni left in our pot so please do not waste one more minute. Find that friend, or family member and reach out. Paraphrasing Walter Payton, ‘Today is here, tomorrow is not promised!’ Don’t be left with a regret. 

Thank you for stopping by! Remember, I love reading your comments whether you comment here publicly, or whether you reach out to me via my email: [email protected]. I hope to see you next time with your cup of tea in hand, visiting with me in Blogville. You can tell me about reconnecting with your old friends! 
Hello my Blogville friends. Thanks for joining me today as I sip my green tea with a little honey and lemon. I’m not sure that I will be able to write this blog, and even if I do, I’ll need to decide if it is a good idea publish it on my website. What I do know is that I need to write it. Writing helps me process things. If you are reading this blog you know what my decision is. NOTE: I offer you a Trigger Alert for grief and loss. Please consider your frame of mind before continuing to read.

As a preface to the rest of this blog, please know that I am a person who randomly tries to reconnect (and hopefully stay connected) with people who have crossed life paths with me. For example, I recently reconnected with one of my bridesmaids and now we chat monthly on the phone. I honestly enjoy finding old friends, seeing who and how they are now, and attempting to keep in touch. Sometimes it is enough just to find and connect with a person once, other times we stay connected and keep in touch. Yep, I’m that person!

So my story begins in Kindergarten about 60 years ago when I met my friend whom I will call J. We became fast friends and instantly ‘pretend sisters’ as each of us was cursed with having only brothers. J and I did everything together, well, as much as our parents would let us do. We lived close enough to each other, and to our school, that we would walk together pretty well every day. There was a fountain between our two addresses on the route to school where we would usually meet, and then walk the rest of the way together. In those days town children did not have a bus, nor did our parents drive us to school. In my case, my parents did not even own a car until I was 16 years old.

Our walks were fraught with the magic of children’s conversations making unrealistic plans about what our futures would look like. We planned that our houses would be across the street from each other, if not right next door, so our children could play together. Our husbands would be best friends or maybe even brothers! We wished for puppies and had to settle for goldfish. We wished for new bikes, she got one and I got my brother’s used one, and our bike adventures began. 

We would walk holding hands and swinging our arms in perfect tandem with each other. In the late spring as we passed a hillside house with a huge rolling lawn, we would look at each other and run screaming to the top before tumbling down together. The resulting grass stains hardly showed on our navy school uniforms but the elbows of our white blouses often gave us away. I am still amazed today how our mothers managed to get those blouses back to a perfect white every time, even the elbows! In the winter, naturally the draw to slide down that same rolling, then snow covered, lawn/hill was equally irresistible. Those walks to school were filled with the magic of young girls’ imaginations every single day. 

Even the best of friends have disagreements and we were no different. My fondest memories are of how we would use our parents as ‘weapons’ in our little ‘fights’. Her father, a food wholesaler, and my father, a railway employee were deployed in our imaginations to make the other’s life miserable. J threatened that she would have her father stop selling my family food so that we would starve to death unless I would acknowledge she was right about whatever we were arguing about at that moment. I, also looking to be right would inform her that my father would stop the supply trains where her father got the food rendering his wholesale shelves empty, and causing his business to fail. Our childhood omnipotence was rampant on the rare occasions we fought.

One of my favourite stories about J and I is the time that, in addition to Sunday services, we had to attend a Mass on our own as part of our Catholic Education curriculum, maybe it was for Lent or something, I’m not really sure. So one day, walking home together after school, we could see that there was a Mass going on by the number of cars in the parking lot. People were still going in so we knew it hadn’t started yet and we looked at each other and spontaneously decided to attend the Mass to complete our assignment. We would be the first ones in our class to achieve the ‘Attend Mass’ goal and we could proudly ‘tick that box’. So in we went, in our school uniforms, and took a seat in one of the pews. 

People in the church that day seemed quite sad, so we mirrored their sad faces. We guessed that they were not happy about attending an extra Mass either. People stood up and we followed suit, though they really blocked our view of the main aisle. We caught a glimpse of a shiny box draped in a white cloth rolling up the aisle but had no idea what that box might be for. I am pretty empathetic as a person, even back then, so I found myself tearing up at the increasing sobbing sounds filling the church. We sat through the Mass, even squeezing around that shiny box to receive communion, and snuck out a side door once the Mass was over.

Obviously these were the ‘days before cell phones’ so our mothers were quite upset with us by the time we got home. Apparently our dads had been trying to find us when we had not arrived home after school as expected. Not surprisingly, no one thought to check for us at the church  service. In hindsight, no one but the teacher was yet even aware of the new class assignment to attend an weekday Mass.

I remember explaining the class assignment to my parents and letting them know how weird it was to go to a Mass on a weekday. I asked them what was in the box because J and I were hoping they would open it and let us see but, to our disappointment, it had remained closed. I’m sure you can imagine my reaction when they explained what a funeral mass was, and delicately, what was in the box. The worst part at the time? The teacher did not let us count it as our Mass commitment. If I am not mistaken (it has been a while) I think we just ended up attending an after school Mass as a class. That funeral mass was J’s and my introduction to loss, and people’s reaction to loss. 

Speaking of loss, J moved on to a private school in grade nine and despite our tears and promises to remain best friends, life changed for us both. Her school was in a different community, and I cannot honestly recall if we even exchanged one letter or birthday card, despite our commitment to the idea of keeping in touch. As is the way of life, our commitment waned and it was many, many years later that J and I reconnected. I know she was invited, but I cannot definitively recall if she was at my wedding.

I think it was about ten years ago when I remembered that J resided in the large city that I would be attending for work, so I randomly reached out to her through social media, and we were able to get together. She came to collect me from my hotel and we spent some time on her sailboat, an adventure I had never been on before. At this point I had a growing family in Northern Ontario and she remained unmarried and living in Southern Ontario. I just love how the years melt away when spending time with childhood friends. Despite our promise to stay in touch, life got in the way, and we lost touch again.

Many years later I was visiting with one of my children and his family down south and I reached out to J again as they were now living in her city. She met my son, his wife and their new baby, then she and I went off for brunch. We spent the rest of the afternoon reminiscing. She showed me where she worked and we went to her gated community for tea so I could see her apartment/condo. It was a wonderful visit. 

About a year later we reconnected again as her brother had passed away and she would be coming north for his service/internment. I went up to the small community we had grown up in to attend the service. I met J’s friend, A, that she had travelled up with, and met some of her relatives and friends of her family. It was a peaceful event followed by a luncheon at a local restaurant. I got to know a few of the people who had attended the service and we shared some stories and laughter. When I had to leave to drive home J came outside and we hugged. She promised to contact me when she would be coming up to settle the estate and sell her family home within the coming weeks or months and I promised to make the short drive up and help her or even just to visit. We hugged again and I left for the drive home. This was last month.

A couple of weeks ago I was staying overnight in North Bay and contacted another ‘old’ friend to see if we could get together. We met for tea at a local restaurant and had a great visit despite the years between seeing each other. We talked about J and the loss of her brother as well as the fact that J and I had gotten the chance to see each other again. We talked about our J’s and my plan to get together upon her return to manage her brother’s estate. My North Bay friend and I also talked about getting together again when I would be passing through the next time. 

Here is the possible grief and loss trigger. Earlier this week I got a long distance call from J’s friend, A, who had come up with my friend for her brother’s funeral. Thinking J was driving, and so her friend was calling, I expected her to say they were on their way north to deal with the estate. Instead, J’s friend told me that J is gone, that she passed away. Fraught with disbelief I barely registered the details of what had happened to J. I can honestly say that I did not fully believe the friend until I received a link to the obituary and funeral information from her in my inbox. What her friend said is true, J is gone. The promise of seeing her again, is gone, in an instant, leaving me with a wish. I wish I had stayed longer after her brother’s funeral, that I had kept in touch more, and that I had told her what a good friend she had been when we were children. 

My message to you? Look around you, look at your life and see who mattered/matters then and now? Can you find those people or that one person? I am so grateful, despite the circumstances of losing her brother, to have had those precious hours with my friend before she passed so suddenly and unexpectedly. I am grateful to have had the chance to have a cup of tea with my other friend in North Bay, and I hope to have many more cups of tea with her. I am grateful to chat with friends by phone regularly and to keep up with their lives while sharing the details of my life with them. To use a pasta reference, we do not know if we have a strand of spaghetti or an elbow macaroni left in our pot so please do not waste one more minute. Find that friend, or family member and reach out. Paraphrasing Walter Payton, ‘Today is here, tomorrow is not promised!’ Don’t be left with a regret. 

Thank you for stopping by! Remember, I love  your comments whether you comment here publicly, or whether you reach out to me via my email: [email protected]. I hope to see you next time with your cup of tea in hand, visiting me in Blogville. You can tell me about reconnecting with old friends!