It's certainly an exercise in retrospect to think back on childhood friends and look at where everone is today...
Exhibit "A"
When I was eleven years old, one of my best friends was a ninja warrior. Well, OK. He only dressed like one. Being that I was a navy brat, and had to move quite often, I never had a chance to become really "cool", and was usually relegated to the geek group within weeks of moving in. The cool kids could smell lack of coolness on you like a shark can smell a drop of blood a mile away. And the geeks were friendly, and always looking for friends. Anyway, the ninja warrior had a drumset in his basement, and could play quite a few songs very well on it. There was a girl next door named Lisa who was a year younger than us, who was quite cute. I remember seeing her sitting on her doorstep talking on the phone a lot.
The ninja warrior would later become so estranged socially that he would drop out of school. After being involved in a car accident, the ninja warrior became hooked on pain meds, and then later illicit drugs. At last count, he is still living with his mother (in his late thirties.
Lisa, on the other hand, grew up and became even more beautiful, married a nice guy, had two kids... and then one day the guy comes home and says he's tired of being married to her. AND that he was taking the kids with him. After the custody hearing, where Lisa lost custody of her two children, she went home, put a gun in her mouth and took her own life. Her grave isn't quite two miles from my home.
Exhibit "B"
My high school peers. When you're in elementary school, there are very few differences between you and the rest of your peer group, when it comes to the essentials. By the time that you're in high school, these small differences become a bit more pronounced.
Where some of my friends would go on to have average, "successful" careers, others were definitely good at blazing trails of their own.
One friend who was somewhat "normal" began working out, getting buff and ripped and pretty much was your all-around stud. Within a year, he starts practicing witchcraft, and then announces that he's got bi-sexual tendencies. I don't know how to properly convey the expression that came across my face when he said that... "WTF" is such an understatement... We were driving down the canyon one night, and he was going to drop me off at my house and head out with some friends. He was really tense... "What's the matter? You're acting like a virgin on prom night..." "Well, I am in a matter of speaking..." Oh, too much information. I did NOT need to know that!
A few more years would go by, and he would switch back to "playing for his former team", marry a stripper, father a few children, get divorced, and only work an $8 per hour job and live with his parents so that his ex-wife wouldn't get any of his money. And that is where he is today, for all I know.
Other high school friends would become a Navy Seal, a rock musician living in Hollywood, an architect, a professor at Harvard, a career drunk, a writer for the TSR role-playing company, an airline pilot, a stewardess, a TV station manager, one has succumbed to breast cancer, and my best friend would become a financial analyst for a huge energy company in Houston. And I became a designer for a civil engineering company...
Exhibit "C"
When I was very, very young, I had a friend named J.J. He and I were the same age; his mother and mine met in the "alternative" high school for pregnant girls. Our parents kept in touch through the years, and J.J. and I would hook up and hang out every once in a while. The last time I remember seeing him was in high school. We went to the local amusement park, and rode a rickety old roller coaster that must have been nearly a hundred years old. We sat in the very front, and as the coaster roared over the top of a hill (right where it bounces you UP out of your seat?), the lap bar popped open, and J.J. and I were suddenly standing. up. on. the. freaking. roller coaster!!!. We hurriedly sat down, and J.J. turned around and gripped the safety bar on the compartment behind us. He was literally green, and I was probably sheet white....
J.J.'s mother became a born-again Christian, and called up a nationwide radio show, and had the pastor pray for my mom over the radio waves, because she was sure my mom was going to hell.
Understandably, J.J. and I didn't see a whole lot of each other past that point. Our families became a bit estranged. His parents eventually divorced, just a few years after mine. He later moved to Southern California, where he worked for a local university.
One day, while scanning the obituaries, I came across his. He was 32 when he took his own life.
In cases like that, I wondered if there was anything I could have done as a friend, had I been there, to make life slightly more tolerable for him. Is it fair for me to ask questions, or even insert myself into that situation?
I think it's natural for us to ask questions upon the death of a friend or a loved one. Questions about how we rated as a friend, or loved one to these people. Sometimes we blame ourselves for things that happen, and other times (more wisely), we come away having learned a few things.
On the flip side of that, we have people who come into our lives, open up the drapes and let the light in, and brighten our lives by their mere presence... And I have endeavored to have the good sense to learn from them, and turn around and share that light with others that I come in contact with. A smile, a hello, a touch... you may never know whose day you brighten by just one of these... you might even give hope to someone like J.J.
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