Old losses

It's a very odd thing to find out that an old friend - one you drifted away from long ago, but for whom you had still good feelings - not only isn't off somewhere living their life, but to find out that they've been dead a double decade is a bit of a shock.  Ms. Packratty had a friend in college and just found out last night that she had died, well shy of 40, more than 2 decades ago.

This friend was one of the few milbrats I knew in college, but unlike Ms. Packratty, she had not found milbrat life tolerable, let alone comfortable.  While Ms. Packratty did have times when she was unhappy in a particular place, overall, the adventures of always going someplace new were sufficient to outweigh the pain of change.  This particular friend had also been hampered by the fact that her parents made it quite clear that they valued her brothers more.  For example, her younger brother died in a car wreck driving back to college, which his parents were paying for.  Car, college, dorm - while his sister was scraping grants, loans and part-time work together to try to finish school.  After the older boy died, the family's affections turned to the youngest, another boy.  I'm not sure she ever finished college or attained anything she might have wanted to.  I do blame her family for not valuing and supporting her, although I wish she could have put some of her injuries behind instead of apparently letting them rule her.

I also still wonder deeply about my friend from high school and the swim team, who was married and a dentist serving in the US Navy who apparently killed himself, leaving a wife and 3 children behind.  It was years before I found out what happened to him and I guess I will always truly wonder what really happened to turn the unfailingly sunny person I knew into someone who would wreck his car to take his life.  I know the suicide rate among dentists has been reported to be higher than other professionals although some recent studies disagree. I have kind of wondered if the move away from mercury fillings might be a factor in changing that statistic.  Mercury exposure HAS been linked to depression, violence and suicide so I'm guessing the move away from mercury based amalgam is a good thing.  Still, I'll probably wonder until my dying day about that friend and mourn my other friends whose lives ended too soon.

I'll always miss Kathy and wonder what her life would have been like if she'd lived long enough for the new therapies which turn her type of leukemia into a chronic thing to live with.  I don't see her in my dreams anymore, not since that dream where she told me she was well now and smiled brilliantly and was gone.

I don't really know what killed Bob Birkler in Florida - they said pneumonia.  I got that stack of books we'd been trading back and forth in the mail and a copy of his obit and nothing else.  Just gone.  I wasn't a romantic connection with him, but I wish someone had told me what truly happened. And his family lived overseas, so there was no one to ask. 

And then there's the couple of friends I can't *find"*.  I last saw Dorothy Messer in SC and then lost touch;  she was married to a fellow named Richard Fahey.  Same for Stephanie Miller from HS - she's disappeared from view and I can't find her.  I'd love to say hello to Lucy Boynton from USF days too.  We were always on the edge of being really good friends but never turned that particular corner.  Other folks - we might not be in touch, but I know they are alive and well and that's all I need to know.  What brought us together years ago might be gone, washed or worn away, but I know they're OK and that's enough for the old affections.