Ugh. I’ve been searching on-line since 2003 or so for a friend – this girl I knew at summer camp circa 1989. After 2 weeks of summer camp, we parted ways, but I ended up visiting her for a weekend about 6 months later. I stayed with her family, and they were all awesome, and we had a great time. But we never kept in touch – I’m not sure why. The adult me would’ve told the 13-year-old me to be pen pals with her, at least.
Every few months, I plugged her name into google, but she shares a name with a semi-celeb and those were the only hits I got. Tried facebook, myspace, linkdin, but to no avail.
Today I finally got a hit…and it was her obituary.
sigh
Same age as me, and we both share the same chronic disease, although nothing in the obit mentioned her cause of death. I so wish I had found her sooner. I wonder if she ever thought of me. She was my best bud at camp – it was my first time at an overnight camp, and this one girl in our cabin took a hatin’ to me and spread rumors (which are so silly now, looking back on it, but were deadly serious at the time) about me stealing shampoo from another girl’s shower basket. My friend stood up for me, even before we were friends, and eventually all the other girls came around to my side.
I have a couple of photos of her, and I feel so grateful for that. But I feel like my heart just broke.
Not only was I searching for her just to say hi and reconnect, I also wanted to pick her brain about an odd experience that happened to us at the camp - a sort of counselor abuse (not sexual) that we kind of covered up. I wanted to hear her side of things to determine what was real in my memory, and what was just memory playing tricks. The camp was in her home state, and I remember there actually being some kind of police questioning about the incident, but since I lived out of state I was somehow not involved in that. I’ll probably never know exactly what ended up happening.
I found her brother on linkedin and sent him a condolence note. Maybe he’ll be able to answer some of my questions. But for now, I’m just so very sad.
