In memory...

Last night I had a really emotional discovery.  However, it needs a lot of explanation, so here goes:

When I moved to our house in Clemson as a three year-old, there was a little girl who lived next door.  Her name was Chrissy.  I still remember the first or second day we were there, she invited me to go play in the cul-de-sac with her.  Being the totally worldly-wise three year old that I was, I was very concerned by the request.  I told her that I wasn't allowed to go to other people's houses with her, that I needed to get permission from my mom first.  To my young astonished brain, what did I find when I asked, but that the cul-de-sac belonged to us too!  How cool.  I was the joint-owner of a cul-de-sac, whatever that was.  Of course, I soon realized what it was, but I have never forgotten that conversation.

Chrissy became my (our...I had to share her with my siblings) playmate.  Over the years, as soon as she got home from school we would walk over to see if "Chrissy can come out and play?"  When I went to high school, I rode to school the first semester of our freshman year with Chrissy and her older sister Kate.  No one at school really knew that we were connected; our schedules were very different and we didn't have the same lunch period either.

Right after the second semester of school started, we were awakened by a call early one morning from Jon, Chrissy's older brother, to say that I couldn't ride with Kate and Chrissy that morning.  Chrissy had gone to the hospital and had a brain tumor.  It was a scary time for me, even though I was in total shock and couldn't really process it.  Over the next week or so, Chrissy's condition ping-ponged and eventually led to her passing.  I was really broken up.  However, as people throughout the school grieved, I felt like an outsider because no one really knew that we were close.  One example: everyone started wearing pink ribbons to remember her.  No one offered one to me.  I was heartsick and made myself physically sick.  I couldn't cry and began to feel nauseated as the days passed.

Going to Chrissy's funeral was one of the hardest decisions I ever made.  I waffled back and forth, but eventually decided to go, which was good because I did need the closure.  Later that week, I actually was able to cry with my dad, and I started healing emotionally.  A while later, I wrote a poem about Chrissy, which I copied into her memorial page in my yearbook.  It was not a well-developed poem from a literary standpoint, but writing it helped me to heal.  There were certainly still scars, but they didn't reappear too often. A few years later at graduation, though, the pink ribbons reappeared.  Again I was not offered one.  That still stung.

In the midst of all of my grief, because of the situation at school, I wondered if my friendship had actually meant anything to Chrissy.  I wasn't one of the ones the family called to visit her in the hospital; I wasn't one of the ones involved in the group healing at school; I was an outsider.

Anyway, to link to present day; prior to Chrissy's passing, her family had taken a cruise together...I think to the Bahamas.  I had watched their many pets while they were gone, including a cute little ginger kitten (who has since grown up to be the Garfield of the neighborhood).  As I was going through some old cards yesterday, I found a postcard that Chrissy had sent me from their cruise.  I didn't even realize I had it.  I probably haven't seen it since right after I received it.   I know that Chrissy was saved and I'll see her again in heaven, and the pain has finally fully gone.  I haven't really gone back to those memories in a long time, but seeing that postcard, was a final layer of closure for me.