Faded Memories
A post I just read on another blog made me consider a couple of people from my graduated class who have passed away. To be honest, I don’t know if there are others because I have not kept in touch with most of my classmates. But the two that I know about are memorable in their own way.
Yvonne was always quiet. Always hid behind her glasses. Her glasses were perhaps what was most deceiving. When she took them off, she was strikingly pretty. But they were over sized and quite often falling down her nose. We spent a lot of time together hanging out at the computers in our school acting like we knew something about them. (yea, yea, yea, I liked smart geeky girls even back then) Brand new TRS-80 Model I machines if you want to figure out when this was. Soon enough we were dating, though I must admit I was too young to really know just what “dating” was and she was the first girl I kissed. She passed away a few years ago. Lost her fight with a brain tumor. She was married to Eric, another classmate and childhood friend. He was a good guy and, actually I think, for her sake, was probably the right person to be around while going through that.
Chris was a bit obnoxious. I didn’t hang around him much. Mostly we ran across each other at parties, in class, or in the hallway. But we did chat from time to time. He had a fast car, good looks, got excellent grades, and was expected to go places after school. The summer after graduation, though, he went around a corner too fast on a dirtbike and met a Jeep head on. End of story. Even though I didn’t know him that well, the suddenness of his passing really got to me. One second he was here, next he was gone. Up to that point, I hadn’t really experienced anything like that. I guess his death made me realize I wasn’t immortal.
The times they enter my thoughts are few and far between. Every now something will remind me. But the details fade. I can no longer remember the exact places, or names of others who were around, times of year, or even exactly what year. As time passes they become a smaller part of my life. Figuratively and literally.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:47 am
People show up in our lives so easily… and can disappear just as fast. (Which is why we’re going to eat a great breakfast together in a few weeks!)