Saying goodbye

I like to think that I take a lot of pride in the friendships that I have, and that I put effort into making my friendships work.  I know that I didn't always do that, but it was something that I learned over time.  Looking back on the friendships that I have had in my life, I know that there are 3 people who I once considered to be my best friend.  For whatever reason, as I grew up, I grew apart from those people.  They went from being my best friend to people I made small talk with when I saw them.  My focus for this post is one of those people.

She was the first friend that I ever made.  We met in our preschool class at bible school.  I was crying because I wanted my mom to come back, and she came up and told me it would be ok.  From that point on you could find us attached to each other every year at Hanover.  When we were young teenagers you could find us in the girls dorm with 3 other girls our age laughing our heads off and doing mad libs.  We wrote notes to each other during all of the classes.  In another few years you could find us in the girls dorm talking about boys and how we had all managed to get boyfriends during the week of Hanover in 2000.  In another few years you could find us sitting in Donner lobby with a huge group of people playing the game 'What If'.
We wrote letters in the years before email, then finally got email and started using that to keep in touch.  We visited when we could, and always had a lot of fun together.

Then finally at the end of high school we grew apart.  I started to realize that we didn't really have all of the same values or outlook on things.  I started to feel like I was being judged.  I said some nasty things, and cut her out of my life.  I felt guilty about that for a long time, and eventually apologized to her.

There is still something to say though about best friends.  Even though there are 3 that I have had that aren't really "friends" of mine anymore, they will still always hold a special place in my heart.  This one especially.

She is going to die soon.  A fact that I have known for awhile, but made all the more real by something she said to me at Hanover this year, and something she put on facebook yesterday.  At Hanover this year, we were reminiscing about the crazy things we did there as kids.  She simply said that she was really happy she was able to come.  -It was the way she said it that made me think that she knew it was the last time that she would ever be at Hanover.  Yesterday on facebook she said that this treatment was one of her last options.  She looked really bad when I saw her a few weeks ago in Indiana.  I know I am going to have to say goodbye to her soon.

I don't really want to do that.  I sobbed the day I found out she had cancer.  I know what we as Christadelphians believe that the people who have died will be raised again when Christ returns.  But honestly, that doesn't make death any easier.  Anyway, it just bummed me out what she said on facebook yesterday and made me think about the relationship we once had.

playing at Hanover in 1994

entering our teens at Hanover in 1998

At a gathering in 2002