Loss Of An Old Friend

I visited my high school alumni web page yesterday, to see if there was any talk of a reunion in a couple of years. We had a 10 year, but not a 15. Anyway, there is a directory, where you can go in and say what you're doing now. I read about some old friends, and then got the notion to look a few names up on Google. I hung out in a group of five my senior year. We all became very close; but lost touch after graduating; well two of us did anyway. Two were brother and sister, and the brother had married the third one of our group. I saw them at our 10 year reunion. His sister was in a different class, so she wasn't there, but we got the update that she was getting married in a few months. Anyway, to reduce the likelihood of getting someone with the same name in my search, I picked the two that married each other to search for. While there are probably more out there with the same name, the chances of two married people sharing both names with two other married people are slim. The first page that came up on Google was for the American Cancer Society, and there were a list of donors with the married couple's names. And honestly, I didn't even notice that it was for the ACS until I went back to that page later on. The second page was something called young survivors; where I found a copy of an obituary from April of 2008. It turns out that the sister got breast cancer (at least that's what I gathered from some of the posts) and had died. She was only 29 years old. I did some more searching, and found the obit on our local newspaper's site; though she was living in Houston at the time. There was a guest book to sign, but it had already expired and had been archived.

The whole thing floored me. She was my date to Homecoming my senior year; although we had gone as friends. We had all gone as a group. I've been sad since I found out. I mean it's not like I still knew her. I hadn't talked to her in over 15 years. But I think of all of those friends often; and wonder what they are up to now. I would always picture her smiling and making people laugh; because that's what she did; she made people feel better. It was fitting that she had become a doctor. The obit said that she had not had any children, but she had been married for 4 and half years. She was too young. God bless her and her family.