Losing a Friend

The only tangential relationship this post has to writing is that I'm someone who routinely tries to figure things out, which is probably why I'm a discovery writer, not an outliner. I don't know what I don't know.  

What sparked this topic was a tribute post I read on X about a person who just died. In it, the author mentioned their "complex relationship". I love the honesty in that. Most of my relationships have been complex, meaning they weren't without emotional conflict of some type. I wonder if that doesn't describe all close relationships, if one is being honest. 

I've been working somewhat diligently to answer my memorygram questions, which the site claims should take about 6-8 months. So far, it's been seven months and I'm woefully behind. As a writer, this should have been a snap to complete, but my problem is with the remaining questions. There are certain topics I refuse to delve into, and one of them is about my childhood best friend. 

She and I were really close as teens. We did everything together, starting around age 12 up through high school graduation. She was the maid of honor at my wedding. So why is the subject so touchy for me? Well, she dropped me. Just like that. 

One's teen years are so impactful and formative that one tends to remember almost every detail. She and I even had fun doing nothing together, but we did do a lot, like scrambling to get first row at concerts when only general admission seats were offered. We saw movies together and made fun of them as we sat in the dark almost empty theater. We had a yearly Christmas shopping excursion, during which we'd each have to parse out what little money we had to try to find gifts for every member of our families. We rode the city bus to downtown, where we'd inevitably end up in the basement gift shop of a local pharmacy, checking out kitschy gag gifts for our more humorous-minded family members. The gifts were cheap, which was right up our alley. Our gifts to one another were two albums each, and she was adept at finding ones I wouldn't have bought for myself, but that inevitably turned out to be great. We took a post-graduation trip together that turned into a debacle, but hilarious in hindsight. 

In seventh grade, once I finally saved up enough money to buy that red guitar hanging in the music store window, she'd come over every Saturday for a few weeks and teach me how to chord. She came from a musical family; her older brother was in a band with their uncle. She herself was a great singer from a young age, and she'd join the band when they played at places where a minor could perform, like festivals and fairs. I believe that once she turned 18, she was granted a special waiver that allowed her to perform in bars, which was where the band had the majority of their bookings. 

One embarrassing moment for me happened as a young teen when I was visiting her parents' house during the band's practice session. I got so caught up in the music that I walked up to where she was singing into the mic and tried to join in. She gently pulled the microphone away and drifted a few feet from the center of the room. My face burnt hot. I was certain everyone in the room was laughing at me. I definitely got the message--I wasn't one of the cool people, and how dare I imagine I was! But that was one thing I overlooked that would come back to bite me later; her family had a certain air about them, one of superiority, even though they were as middle class as my own. The truth was, my friend's brother couldn't sing worth a damn. He had a thin, reedy voice with no warmth to it. The only member of the family who had actual talent was her. She had tons of it. But musical talent doesn't grant one a societal edge over other people, even though her family firmly believed it did. It was clear over the years that her brother disdained me, which made things uncomfortable, since she and I were too young to drive, so he ended up chauffeuring us to the various places we wanted to go. His snark was impossible to miss, but I brushed it aside. We needed that ride, after all. In all the years I knew him, he never warmed up to me, nor I to him, to be honest. I tried making conversation with him, but it always led to dead air.*

*Once, a few years later when I had a part-time retail job, he showed up at my register one evening, no hint of recognition on his face. He wouldn't even make eye contact. I asked him a question or two about my friend, and he grunted in response, then picked up his bag and went on his way. 

After I was married, my friend and I didn't see each other much. This wasn't unexpected; I had my own new life and she had hers. We talked on the phone a few times, and only recently did I realize that I was always the one who initiated the calls. On one of those calls she announced that she was dating a much older man. I was perplexed. In addition to being uber-talented, my friend was quite attractive. In fact, she participated in my state's competition to qualify for the Miss America pageant. (I diligently attended all three preliminary judging sessions, where she won the talent competition.) Why would she pick an old man? It also seemed like she was trying too hard to convince me of his positive characteristics. I held my tongue. 

Neither she nor I had great financial prospects. I had a clerical job with the state and she had one with a bank. She did, of course, have her band earnings, too, but she continued to live at home with her parents. 

A couple of years later when I had my first baby, I gave my friend a call. My son was around six months old, old enough to take on fun outings, so I suggested that I drive out to her parents' house so she could meet him. "Oh, that's okay," she replied. 

She'd just casually dismissed the most important part of my life.

I knew it in that instant, but as hurt as I was, I refused to acknowledge that our friendship was over. I wasn't ready to let it go. She was.

I later learned through the grapevine that she had married the old guy. I wasn't invited to the wedding, but I gleaned that it was a small affair, probably at the courthouse. The man was divorced, with grown children. Back then, situations like that weren't socially condoned. What he did have as an attorney was money, enough that my friend was able to open her own gift shop at the local mall. I never visited it. I was sick of being rejected. 

In all the years I knew her, I never found her to be obsessed with money. The subject never even arose. Objectively, I don't think she married him for his money. That was a bonus. Still, the whole thing was inexplicable.  

Years later when my then-husband and I wanted to get into dancing and just have an occasional night out, we began visiting some local clubs. The most popular club featured great local and regional acts, so that was our go-to. My friend's band was never booked there. They did have a regular gig at a more staid club on the northern outskirts of town. In actuality, the band was rather out of step with the times, and thus frequented by a more geriatric crowd. Song choice responsibility landed on my former friend's brother. He shared lead singer duties with his sister, and for whatever reason he just couldn't get into modern music. He tended to favor Johnny Cash tunes and old two-step hits from decades before. The musicians seemed quite capable and the band even included a piano player who I once dated. So no, it was him. He led the band and he dictated the set list. 

Every once in a while, our favorite club booked a dud of a band, so we'd wander up to the "old folks" place. I recall one night, sitting at our table for two, when the band took its break. They settled into a long table right next to ours, and neither I nor my former friend acknowledged each other's existence. It was all on her now, I told myself, and once again I came away disappointed.

She'd become someone I no longer recognized. I stress that from the time we met in sixth grade, we were exclusive friends. I only ever wanted one friend who I could be myself with, without the game playing, without pretending to be someone I wasn't. Sure, we had mutual school acquaintances, but our frequent outings were a two-person operation. We shared a sense of humor no one else quite understood. When we found ourselves in the same seventh grade English class and were assigned a fictional story to write, which our teacher said could be a small team project, she and I got together and wrote a goofy parody of a detective tale. We found it hilarious. We researched papers together in the school library, but frankly spent most of that time laughing over silly things. To this day, I believe she really liked me. 

Maybe it was just a snapshot in life. Maybe she did truly consider me her best friend then. I couldn't have possibly been naive enough to spend seven years being friends with a fake.

I didn't spend decades dwelling on the way our relationship ended. Life went on. I had my kids and I had (finally) a real career. Later I got remarried and moved away. Then one night my youngest son called. "Dad wanted me to tell you that Alice passed away." 

She was forty-seven!

My son filled me in on the few details he knew. (He'd never even met her.) It was a sudden illness; she ended up in the hospital and died a day later.  

"Oh," I said. 

I was shocked, but I felt no other emotion. So I thought.

But the news ate away at me. Silently. My new husband, of course, never knew her, either, but I'd talked to him about her from time to time. This, however, was something I couldn't/wouldn't share...with him or with anyone. I was in mourning...for my lost childhood.

My husband is a songwriter. He'd nagged me from the time we got together to just "try" to write a song. I told him, no; that wasn't me. I wrote prose and that was that. Then one night while he was off in another room recording, I listlessly picked up my rarely played guitar. Yep, the same guitar I'd bought in seventh grade. And suddenly words and music flowed. 

The song was about my friend and me, how she'd taught me how to play guitar, the songs she taught me...that I still remembered how to play. How I'd heard the news of her passing. The last line was, "I want one more chance to talk to you today."

Once I allowed the emotions to flow, I became obsessed with finding out all I could about what had happened to her. I somehow connected with one of her band members, a man I'd never met, who filled me in as much as he could. Really nice, sincere man. He told me he'd mail me the band's CD. I already owned their first album, which was given to me by my friend when we were still nominally friends. 

The man told me that initially the doctors thought her condition was highly treatable. It was simply a matter of IV's and a couple recovery days. They were so confident, they never even moved her into the ICU. 

Then he told me she opened her eyes and announced, "I'm dying." 

Don't try to tell me that people don't know. They know.

I almost convinced myself that she and I had remained friends 'til the end, when in fact we'd stopped being friends almost 30 years before. Her band had a Facebook page, and on impulse I sent a link to my song to her brother's wife, who ran the account. I'd known this woman almost as long as I knew Alice's brother. I was surprised when she responded. Maybe my heartfelt tribute touched her. She asked for my email address.

A couple days later I received an email from Alice's latest beau. (She'd divorced the geezer attorney years before.) He asked me a bunch of questions about the "old days" and I enjoyed answering them, bathing in the glow of nostalgia. I'd read in her obituary that she'd been dating him, and like all semi-small towns, everybody knows or knows of everybody else. I'd worked at the same place as this guy years before. His office was on the first floor; my desk was in the basement. So at the end of my response, I mentioned to him that I knew him (sort of) and explained the circumstances. I never heard from him again. Never did hear from sis-in-law, either.

I think that's when my delusion ended. To her family, I was the useless nuisance who hung around all the time. I only became useful when I was the only one who could recount certain memories. The beau? Eh. I didn't care about him; hardly knew him, but he, too, had apparently been instructed to use me for whatever blanks he needed filled in.

Perhaps I should view that with gratitude. The first eighteen years of one's life shapes the person they become. Of course we all change somewhat, but certain things are by then ingrained. Because she's not here to tell that story, it fell on me to tell it. Yes, both of us went on to have second lives; third lives in my case, and I knew nothing of the person she later became. Newspaper tidbits tell one nothing about a person except for dry facts. Had we reconnected, would we have fallen naturally into our old selves, our old personalities? Maybe. But she didn't want that, and I'd long ago given up. 

While I could certainly answer that memorygram question if I confined my response to a six or seven-year period, I would be lying to myself. As the decades pass, it's gotten harder and harder to recall those fun times that once rolled off my tongue so naturally. Those oft-repeated embarrassing anecdotes.

I do wish she was still here and that we could clear the air between us. There's so much that needed to be said, but was instead met with stubborn silence when we did have the chance. That night at the old folks club, I should have walked over to her table, put my hand on her shoulder and told her how good it was to see her. So what if she'd pretended to not know who I was? So what if her brother sitting next to her exhaled a loud snicker? I at least would now be comforted by the fact that I tried.

My fallback position is, if I'm not wanted, then I don't want you, either. 

It only hits us later that we may never get another chance.