Friends

Several weeks ago, a friend from college, K, who I met through my sorority recently contacted me. She found my email address at Classmates.com. She has five children and the oldest is 15 years old. I can't believe how old I am and how much time has gone by. It was nice to hear from her and say hello. It made me miss my other friends from that time whom I've lost touch with.

I decided to try and contact two other sorority sisters that I hung out with the most in college. One of them, L, was my best friend. We lived together for several years while we were in school. The other, S, was her 'Little Sister'. I looked for S online and am pretty sure I found her blog. I sent her a short email that said Hi and if this is the right S from X college, I'd love to hear from you. I haven’t received a response and that was over two weeks ago. I had hoped to hear from her but, it's okay. S was always pretty finicky. I last saw her almost 8 years ago. She was never one to look back and reminisce.

I had kept up with L on a fairly regular basis after college. People always thought we looked like sisters, a complement we were both tickled to get. She and I went to separate cities after college then she moved out of state with her new husband. The time between talking and cards became longer and longer. I think they were in their 3rd state in the same number of years when Z guy and I moved to California. She had her first daughter that same year – 10 years ago this summer. We tried to talk often as possible. Her husband was a real jerk in my opinion and so many times she’d call me crying. Almost 4 years ago (1.5 years after the birth of her second daughter) I noticed that our phone conversations were becoming repetitive. We spoke so infrequently that I thought maybe she just didn’t remember what we’d talked about the last time. The fourth time the same story came up, I told her gently that she’d already told me the story of daughter number two and the priest at church and yes, she’d mentioned the story of daughter number one and grandma in heaven. She said she was sorry and then the conversation ended abruptly. Three weeks later, her husband left her. She was so devastated, quiet and withdrawn. I chocked it up to the circumstances. Boy was I wrong and right all at the same time. I didn’t hear from her for over two months (and guiltily, I didn’t realize it, I was wrapped up in my first pregnancy – a very happy time for me). I got a call in November from her sister. They had taken L to the hospital for severe depression. She had totally shut down. She wasn’t eating, dressing herself or taking care of her girls (she’d been a stay at home mom). Her sister wanted to know if I knew of something that might have caused this. I think they expected that her husband might have done something to her (something worse than the emotional abuse he inflicted on her daily). If it happened, she did not share it with me. In December her husband petitioned and won custody of their children. L didn’t fight it which I just couldn’t understand. I spoke to her a several times over the next year. She was progressively worse each time I talked to her. The last time, she was mad because her mom made her talk to me on the phone and tell me that she’d eaten some cheese pizza. I did not call her again. I didn’t think I was helping. It seemed to really upset her mom when I would call. Not that I was calling, but because L still wasn’t well. Her mom took time off from her job and they were going to try giving L some different medication. If that did not help, she was going to have to be permanently hospitalized. That year, I had my first child, I lost my dad to cancer and I lost my best friend to apparent schizophrenia (the doctors were never sure exactly what was wrong with her and why she just shut down).

That was about two years ago. After K contacted me, I thought about calling L’s mom to see how she was doing. I was afraid of opening old wounds. I assumed things had not gotten better since I hadn’t heard anything. So rather than call, I sent her sister an email. I wrote that I did not need a response but that I just wanted them to know that I still think about L and her family quite often and hope that everyone is well. I did not receive a response. I wish I had but I suppose that by not keeping in touch, I forfeited the right to hear updates. I’m not sure what I would have done with the information. I do miss L terribly. She had two girls and now I have two. We always had a lot in common and would have had a great deal to share as we grew into old ladies, had the fates been kind I suppose.