I'm here now

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t know if anyone has really noticed, but I’ve kinda/sorta been on hiatus. I had several “events” back to back, and simply did not have any brains or effort to come to SDMB and play.

I had a colonoscopy. Not my first, won’t be my last.

The procedure itself doesn’t take very long, and besides, the patient gets to sleep through it. But colonoscopies can easily kill a week, forcing you to be completely nonproductive and mean to everybody.

The apex of the hiatus was occupied by my high school reunion. Not just any reunion, either.

The Big Five-Oh.

Peoples’ nametags were difficult to read, even if you were standing on their toes. And NOBODY looked the same!

I did identify a few gentlemen that I had secretly crushed on when I was in high school. Back in those days, I thought they were very good-looking.

I took inventory of the room.

And the most handsome of all the men was the one sitting next to me.

~VOW

2

Welcome back! Glad the colonoscopy is <ahem> behind you.

I used to think that only Old People had 50th high school reunions. Until I had mine. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

It’s very nice when you bring a good-looking guy with you. :wink:

3

Welcome back! Yes, you were missed.

4

Great story VOW, about the reunion. Welcome back. I hope all is well.

5

I told everybody that it just looked like somebody collected a random bunch of (mostly) nicely dressed old people and shoved them in a banquet room, with the promise of a free meal.

~VOW

6

I didn’t stay in touch with more than 4 high school friends and now that list is really down to 1. I’ll skip the reunion as I did with every one after I attended the 10th and lasted a mere 45 minutes before I was too bored to stick around.

But coming up on the other one fast. I just got the call to schedule the colonoscopy that I didn’t get last year due to covid. It’s going to be challenging to prep for it as I no longer have a partner to help with the challenging bits.

7

A day or so after the reunion, I was recapping with a girlfriend, and mentioned there was someone I had been friendly with in eighth grade, and it would have been nice to see her again. I had seen her at the 25th reunion, so I knew she would have been there.

(Historical info: girls ebb and flow with girlfriends over the years of adolescence. You can be close friends with someone in one grade, and then several years after seem like visitors from different planets. That’s the kind of friends I had been with this one girl. On the other hand, I have a few friends I have cherished and been close to for almost sixty years now. Girls are fickle creatures!)

The friend I rehashed the reunion with told me the missing friend had died a while back. She had no details.

A little piece of me grieved. After all, we had been good friends for that one school year.

Yesterday, I sat down with Google, Find a Grave, Military Records, and Ancestry. I found her.

The birthdate the records gave fit. Apparently, she joined the US Army in 1993. Her enlistment age was slightly higher than the cutoff, but I knew there are allowances made for professionals. Since she was a Registered Nurse, it all made sense.

The records for her grave registration in the National Cemetery gave her mother’s name. The same name I had known for her mother. It had to be her.

Her marker said she had served in the Persian Gulf.

From what I found, she separated from the military in 1999. She later died in 2007.

She’s buried in the same National Cemetery where my parents are, and where I have other relatives buried.

That National Cemetery is where Mr VOW and I will make our final resting place.

My next visit there to see Momma and Daddy, I’ll take a few flowers and put them on her grave. I’ll thank her for her service to our country. And I’ll remember two eighth-grade girls who worked together on a social studies project about Alaska.

We made a plaster-of-Paris igloo!

~VOW

8

That’s a good memory to have about a friend long gone.

A high-school friend of mine and I drifted apart when she went straight into marriage and kids and I to college and career. Years later, I got word that she was dying of breast cancer through the grape vine. Sadly, I got word too late. She had become an RN and her family moved further away from the suburbs. I do hope she had a satisfying life outside of the cancer. And I do regret that loss of a lovely person in my life. Life gets in the way and all I can do about the time we told my homeroom teacher that I had to see a man about a horse and then burst out laughing. It was true. We had talked my mother into writing an excuse for me to leave school early for “an appointment”. It was to go horseback riding with Carolyn Joy.

9

Welcome back @VOW .

I’ve been kinda quiet for a day or two myself.

“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans”

10

There’s a special kind of grief when someone from our youth dies. I think we grieve as the nostalgic and worldly-wise adults we are and also as the kid we were (and are). I’m sorry you lost your friend. I love that you two made an igloo out of plaster of Paris.

11

I have been spending more than just an occasional thought about the friend who died.

I played back the conversation with the friend I rehashed the reunion with. When I presented her with all the evidence my research had yielded, including the grave marker at the National Cemetery, my “rehash” friend said, “It’s her.”

My mind goes back to bits and pieces of eighth grade and to memories of that absent friend. We were in a homemaking class together. All the girls (1966, very sexist) were divided into small groups and then each group was assigned to a kitchen. We were supposed to take turns cooking. When the girls at my table found out that I actually knew how to cook, I was appointed as Permanent Head Cook. All our assignments were graded A, because I knew what I was doing. The teacher didn’t have a single clue.

The memory made me smile, but then I could hear in my head my rehash friend saying, “It’s her,” and I would see again the picture of the grave marker in my head.

I realized I didn’t WANT it to be her.

More shards of my childhood are being pried away from me, to fall at my feet.

~VOW

12

Very well said.