Feeling Wistful

Many years ago, I had a friend who was important to me and I think I was to her.

Changes in her life made her drift away. I didn’t look for her. But one day she walked into my life again, and her presence was a blessing. She helped usher a different chapter in both our lives with grace and the kind of warmth possible in old friendships.

Then she vanished, only to reappear at an important junction, again. It was as if the great weaver was threading our strings and resuming embroidering at just the right time.

A few more years, and we lost touch. I thought of her, and trusted we’ll meet again, as the British song goes, “some sunny day.” 🙏

It was actually a foggy afternoon, when I got the urge to look her up. I did what people do who have no acquaintances in common: I googled. Yay! She had Facebook account, and yup, she had posted recently, including a photo of the two of us from way back. I commented on the photo with glee, and also sent a friend request. That’s the protocol of Facebook: you "friend" people who are already your personal friends, you accept friendship from people who will never be more than Facebook friends, and you ask for friendship from people who once were good friends.

I didn’t get a response. I figured that was that, or maybe not.

A few months ago, out of the blue, I got a keen urge to look her up again. I went straight to Facebook. The last post on her timeline was two years old. On one of her posts, another of her friends wrote that she will be missed forever now that she is gone.

The date of her earthly departure was a month before my old friend request. She was much too young to have made this transition. 😢

I’ll never know the last chapters of her life. But I felt wistful and also marveled at the intensity of the connection I experienced right then. To write the whole story of our intermittent connection and how much it meant would be writing a full-length novel, not a short blog post. To try to make sense of it, as one does when constructing a novel, would take more inventive powers and imagination than I have access to for now.

 But nothing stops my feeling that a story is looking for a proper tying of loose ends, the way editors ask us to do.