Best Friends and Goodbyes - #9 of 52

I’ve written before about the year we left B.C. for a summer holiday to Saskatchewan and never returned. It affected me greatly - a fifteen-year-old, ripped away from everything she knew - and it was one of those defining moments of my life. I now realize that it was probably for the best as I had started hanging with the wrong crowds in B.C. but I also like to think I was smart enough that I wouldn’t have gone too far down that road. I’ll never know. And it really doesn’t matter now. I was put on a different path and have ended up having a wonderful, rewarding life.

What I do know is, I had one best friend - just one - and I never got to say goodbye to her. I never saw her again. Ever. We kept in touch for a very short time but our letters were infrequent and, finally, they disappeared entirely. I made new friends in my new home, even some I considered “best friends”, but none were ever quite the same as the girl who’d navigated my precipitous middle-years with me. Her name was Barbra Allen and she was everything that I wasn’t. She was fearless where I was tentative. She laughed loudly and often while I hid my laughter, afraid to be noticed. She was daring and questioned authority and took chances I would have never taken. We were left to our own devices by parents who were defined by the 70’s and not by the constraints of fear and rules and helicoptering that parents are held accountable to these days. I’m not sure our parents even knew where we were half the time. As long as we had returned by suppertime, all was right with the world.

On weekends, Barb and I would ride the bus into the city, by ourselves, and spend the day loitering at the mall, leafing through the latest Tiger Beat magazines to swoon over Donny Osmond or Shaun Cassidy. We’d smoke cigarettes, and ogle the cute boys - Barb laughing out loud and me, blushing terribly and trying not to be noticed. Finally, when we had only enough money between us for the fare home, we’d hop the bus and return, exhilarated by our adventures and emboldened by the fact that nothing bad had happened to us.

Sometimes, after school, when I didn’t have to watch my brother and sister, we’d hang out at her house. It was a big, two-story and seemed so grand compared to our double-wide trailer. We’d either hang out in her room - that she didn’t have to share with a sibling - or head outside to wander around the neighborhood. We talked about everything and nothing. We shared our dreams of what we’d do once we graduated but, being in Jr. High, that day seemed a lifetime away. We complained about our teachers and gossiped about the popular girls; the ones with long, blonde hair and nice clothes who weren’t mean to us because they didn’t even notice us. We giggled about the cute boys who hovered around those popular girls, and we’d make fun of them while hiding the fact that we wished those boys would spare us just one glance; one smile that would validate our existence.

When our family left for that summer holiday, Barb and I said we’d see each other when school started in a few weeks. It was going to be our final year before we moved up to high school and we were both excited. We knew the rest of the summer was going to be boring without seeing one other but we had no idea it was the last time we’d ever be together. Remember, this was a time when there were no cell phones so we couldn’t text each other to stay in touch. Deep down, I’d hoped that things wouldn’t work out in this new place and we’d be returning to B.C. I never imagined then that I’d go on to marry a local guy, raise our children and build a new life. A whole new chapter of my life started when I was fifteen and I didn’t return to the province we’d left until forty years later.

I consider that year my year of loss. I lost my best friend, my old life, and just a few months later, my beloved grandmother died after complications following heart surgery. I was devastated and forever changed. Soon after that, our parents divorced. Everything that had been my life “before” was gone. I learned that, while some “goodbyes” are the end of something, the sun always rises the next morning and its light can chase away even the darkest moments and show us the way to new possibilities if we choose to see them. Goodbyes are as much a part of life as beginnings are. Nothing stays the same. It can't. Without change there is no growth. We only need to look at the changing of the seasons to realize that. And while we may not like what every season holds we get through them..

Now, almost five decades after that summer, I still think of my best friend. I no longer dwell on the should-haves or the what-ifs. Barbra Allen is forever captured in a corner of my memory, as a funny, brave, fearless girl who made my life better for being my friend. I'm thankful for what she meant to me and I pray that her life turned out as good as mine did.