Guideposts

Destiny is all, or so Uhtred from The Last Kingdom would have us believe. I’m not sure I agree, but when I look at the eighteen months, roughly, leading up to Sarah’s death, I see a series of guideposts. There was me getting back in touch with my law school boyfriend, who had lost a child. There was my weird mini-obsession with the death of my high school classmate who had a genetic disorder. And there was my high school friend Susan, who had lost her husband Tony, suddenly and unexpectedly getting back in touch with me on Facebook.

Susan and I were tight during 10th grade when we were both new to our high school, but then we kind of grew apart and made other friends during 11th grade. There were some incidents that I remember looking back as sort of typical high school girl-on-girl interpersonal aggression. A sleepover party in which she clearly had had it with me. (For the record, I was terrible at sleepover parties, and was known to scream at other kids to shut up and go to sleep.) An episode in which she and another girl charged some long distance calls to our home phone number while they were counselors at summer camp. My Dad was really ticked off by this, but I just figured it was their gig.

Susan has around 2000 friends on Facebook and is internet famous for a photo she took at the Million Moms March, and when she reached out to friend me I was flattered and pleased that she even remembered me. She asked if I was the girl she had gone to high school with, and then gave me an abject apology for bullying me if I was, and asked me to forgive her. I was a little perplexed, but of course I forgave her. Who holds a grudge for stuff like that?

Then I reached out to another old friend, Sheila, to ask “Am I so devoid of any sense of self that I didn’t realize I was being bullied in high school?” I mean, far be it from me to deny someone else the pleasures of a really good guilt complex, but I just don’t remember being acutely victimized. But perhaps I was? Or maybe Susan is just very hard on herself, especially since we were all about 15 years old at the time and lacked fully-developed prefrontal cortices.

Leaving aside these fascinating ponderances, I’m so glad to have her back in my life, because she has so many insights on grief and the grieving process. She is a walking teachable moment and she’s also funny as hell and runs her Facebook page like a literary salon. If I were one of those “Everything Happens For A Reason” types, I would be glad that the universe gave her a guilt complex and placed her back in my life. That is to say, I am glad that the universe placed her back in my life. But the loss of Tony and Sarah is not something I would have wished on a couple of fifteen year-old girls in Tretorns.