Letting go of a best friend

As we go through this life close friends are important. I have been lucky to have two best friends in this life so far. Unfortunately, I have lost them both. One to suicide and the other walked away.

Sharyn and I met in kindergarten and one thing we could always say about our friendship was it was easy. We never had to work to be friends. We just got one another. We had stories all the way through.

In second grade we arranged a playdate for Sharyn to come to my house after school, we had all the permission slips signed, Sharyn walked home from school with me, instead of riding the bus, and the moment we walked in the house my nanny exclaimed that “she” never agreed to this playdate and that Sharyn would have to go home. So, we had to call her mother to come get her. I remember how embarrassed and crushed I was. I was sure I had lost a friend. Instead, the next, and subsequent playdates, were at her house. This became a lifelong story we told about our experience together.

We were virtually inseparable until our sophomore year in high school where our irresponsible behavior and our parents caused us to lose our friendship. We did not speak again for 25 years.

We reconnected thanks to Classmates.com and, more specifically, Facebook. When we had our first visit after 25 years it was as if no time at all had passed. Our husbands connected like brothers, and we spent the next several days in the same ease of friendship we had before.

We were blessed to reconnect and even though we didn’t live close we stayed close sending messages, phone calls, and checking in often. The day she died she sent me a message about her 20th wedding anniversary trip and she was so excited. I was thrilled for her. When I got the call from her husband that she killed herself that night, I was crushed. When you lose someone you love that was your soul sister, you can’t make heads or tails of why.

Sharyn had rough patches before and she always reached out to me and I was there. That night I was alone. My phone was on. I could have been there. She didn’t.

I often feel sad about losing her, about the years we missed, and more about the years we will never have.

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I met X teaching Irish dance to adults. X and I became friends through trading private lessons and haircuts. We became fast friends and started spending a lot of time together. So much so that it often seemed like my husband had two wives.

We were very close for nearly a decade and often talked about how we would would be happy to list each other as life partners to if that helped offset costs when we were old ladies.

Then X started dancing a different form of dance. I tried it and it wasn’t for me so we spent less and less time together, but I still considered X a close and dear friend. I would go to her performances and take pictures. She was stunning and I loved how she lit up when she danced.

She met a man who cared for her deeply but I didn’t sense that she had the same depth of feeling for him. I know I didn’t really understand their relationship but X really didn’t help me understand it either. I wanted to be happy for her but I wasn’t sure what they had in common.

When it had been weeks since hearing from her and after repeated attempts to reach her I sent her a message asking what was up. I didn’t hear anything for another long period of time. So, I once again sent a message saying that since she seems to have withdrawn her friendship I felt I deserved an explanation. She replied with a lengthy response that put simply said: “it’s not me… it’s you.”

This broke my heart. I believed that friendship was a two way street both supporting one another and being there for one another.

Friendships are important in life and, according to Life Reimagined by Barbara Bradley Hagerty relationships and friendships are vital to quality of life in midlife and old age. I am feeling woefully short on the friend department these days. I have started establishing some new solid relationships thanks to Matt and Katie opening the Colorado Common Taproom last May. Hopefully, some of these friendships will grow.