Even When You’ve Lost Touch With Old Friends Who’ve Died
Their memory continues to be a legacy of love
I haven’t kept up with my college friends. Although I adored them at the time, they represented a painful epoch in my life. Sometimes I’d google their names just to see where they were and how they were doing. But like viewing old photographs in an album, I’d soon turn the page. It’s not a time period I enjoy revisiting. However, I got a Facebook message from an old friend, alerting me of the sudden death of one of our old gang: Her former lover and my former friend. I was shocked at the level of my grief on hearing the news. It cut me deeply and made me draw my breath sharply. As if I had never really made peace with that time period and this was now a sharp reminder of how quickly life goes by.
She was amazingly talented — graphic designer, artist, majoring in the arts department of our university. A physical composite of Madonna and Marilyn Monroe meets hand-me-down LL Bean, but she forged her own fashion way. We all ran together back in that small college town. I was in awe. She was adorably blond in a white bread manner. I couldn’t relate through the lens of my ethnic background. So, I just admired her from afar. Until one day I got my marching orders:
