A Moment for Tears

I was doing some internet research early this week for a book project on which I am working, and I accidentally came across an obituary with a familiar name. It took me a moment to think of why I remembered the name, and exactly who the person had been. She had been a classmate of mine in high school. Although I don’t think we were ever really friends, we shared a seat in almost all the most challenging classes in our school, when they were still divided into classrooms of high performers, average students, and those benefiting from some remediation. I suppose in the lingo of today, she would have been within my academic cohort.

I graduated from high school one year early to attend college in an era where this was considered sacrilege, but I had my father’s approval. Although I continued contact with about four classmates over the years from my high school class, I didn’t really keep in touch with the others, and I didn’t return to the area. I did hear when several of our class died in separate car crashes and one in a fire, and I grieved them.

I graduated from two colleges and started a career as a registered nurse. The closest I came to hearing from anyone at the high school was during the time I had the school psychologist as a patient. He was a dear man who saw the school quite differently than I had. As my twenties progressed, I married, became the mother of two babies in rapid succession, and moved out of state as I balanced career, parenthood, and a new house.

Over the years, the several careers I have enjoyed had to mesh with the lives of the five children I eventually had. During a more bullish economy, we sold our homes and moved about every five years, being careful to put more money down on each home. I rarely gave thought to high school, although I did stay in touch with close friends from there, and from college. As time progressed, more and more of my friends from high school and college were spread over the country. Many of my college friends became college professors. One became a physician after having been a registered nurse. Some became entrepreneurs. I learned that from my high school class five had become engineers, two had become physicians, one had become a nurse practitioner. One had become an artist. Four became teachers. Eventually, my own high school class blurred a little bit with the students a year older or a year younger who were there at the same time.

This week, when I saw my classmate’s obituary, I remembered that she was a lovely girl. She was bright, always happy, and was very attractive and had thick blonde hair. She was never negative about anything we had to do there. She always tried her best, and she was good at sports, academics, and anything social. I remembered that she was really good in tennis, and that she had the distinction of being an academic standout as well as a varsity cheerleader. I remembered that one of her brothers was in school with us, and that they were always glad to see one another. I remember once thinking while watching her laugh as we played soccer, that blondes must really have more fun.She had flourished in high school where I had scrambled to get away.

While I had been raising children, developing careers, and enjoying friends in another state, my classmate had attended three universities and graduated as an artist. She returned to our home

state, married and had two children. She became a part of the challenging and highly political art world which will chew you up and spit you out faster than any high school will.

Today, my classmate is gone from Earth. She left two children who are doing well. She was divorced before she died, and the obituary gives no clue as to how she passed. I can hardly imagine the young smiling woman I knew divorcing anyone. As I recall, we weren’t really friends and yet I knew her middle name when I saw her obituary. I remembered where she lived, how she looked, her brother and what he planned to study in college. She had been resilient, in a place where I hadn’t been. Perhaps I had not yet been worthy of being her friend. I grieve her life cut short. I grieve the time she will not be spending with her young adult children. She will miss living long enough to see her grandchildren here on Earth.

I think she left something important to me that she doesn’t even know about. She left me the example of always smiling, of doing your level best wherever you are. She always bloomed where she was planted, where I might have whined about the soil. I think she might also have taught me that the people you might see every day, and who might not seem important in your life, might actually be important to you later. I took a moment away from the book I was writing to cry for her. I think you probably lived a pretty good life if a classmate from many years ago thinks of you kindly, and cries at the thought of your passing.