Don't forget to remember

Memorial Day weekend is racing upon us, coming early this year.  The unofficial start of summer, a time to open pools, get the camper ready for weeks of fun, and get the garden in…it is technically a day to remember those who lost their lives in service to their country.  There will be parades, and cookouts, and an extra day tacked on to the weekend to help us celebrate this day of remembrance.   I have worked in the garden center business for decades now, and I know that most people remember all their loved ones who have gone on, military or not, by visiting the burial sites and decorating them with flower baskets.  Today I remember my friend.

I became friends with her in high school.  An unlikely match.  She played softball, field hockey and basketball and earned letterman’s jackets for her excellence.  I twirled baton, for which I also earned letters, and she would joke that baton twirling is a poor excuse for a sport.  Perhaps she was right, she had bruises from the field hockey stick, but I had singed arm-hair from the fire baton…it counted to me.  We dated close friends, so we spent many weekends together, and we served on the yearbook committee together, she as a photographer, and me, who knows.  I don’t recall other classes together, and I don’t remember long phone calls, shopping trips, gossip sessions, sleepovers, typical bestie stuff.  But I do remember her laugh.  She loved a party and she loved to bring people together, and she liked me, despite our differences.   We would run together in the late afternoon on the turf of the Whitinsville Country Club, barefoot.  We ate ice cream at Friendly’s…hers was black raspberry, and mine was chocolate chip.  We drank kahlua sombreros on the weekends; those days the drinking age was 18, and it was not hard to find a friend a couple years older who would “buy” for us.  One summer, tired of the same old routine of hanging out at the summer league basketball courts, I called her and asked if she would like to go to York Beach and see what we could find for work.  She said yes, and we left the next day, my mother drove us there and just dropped us off…we had no job, and no place to stay, and one bike between us.  After a week in an overpriced boarding house, we scored a job at the iconic Goldenrod, working the same shift, and found a secluded “cottage” on Rte 1A for $25/week.  We had the summer at the beach that you read about, including being outlawed in the state of Maine for a short while, but that is another story…it involves a lobster trap.  She studied marketing and went on to a promising career.  I graduated with a liberal arts degree and went off on another adventure, to Alaska.  She came up to my wedding a couple years later, my only invited guest; my parents and family could not afford the trip, but she came.  We sat on the bank of the river the night before the ceremony, drinking Kahlua.  She said, “you don’t need to do this, you know.”  She was right, and she was honest, and she was supportive, she was my friend, she was not afraid to tell me the truth, and that is what I love and miss about her the most.  I got married, and she went home.  I had children and she pursued a promising career.  At the age of 29, while away with other mutual friends celebrating New Year’s Eve, her car veered off the slippery road, and her life ended just as 1990 ended.  I do not know if she would have married, travelled, had children…but I do know we would still be friends.  I last visited her grave the weekend before I was planning to marry for the second time.  I brought a small bottle of Kahlua and shared it with her as I told her all about Jack.  I can hear her laughing now…she would have loved him.  I miss you, Denise.  You made a wonderful impact on my life.   I will not forget to remember you.