Sacred

There are things that are sacred.  Childhood friends are one of them.  Especially those you haven’t seen since entering adulthood.  Those friends, who affected you profoundly for one reason or another, but exist only in your childhood.  They are sacred and should remain ever so.

One of my sacred childhood friends died of cancer today.  She is a person I haven’t thought of for a long, long time, but the minute I did, immense, colorful, warm, bright memories flooded back to me immediately.  She had tangles of gorgeous brown curly hair.  Lovely hazel eyes.  The biggest smile you’ve ever seen.  And I remember a very specific conversation we had about being a tomboy, “It’s fine to run with the boys, Sha.  I always have too.  I’ll bet you can run faster if you try, can’t you? “  Looking at the ground, I answered shyly, “Maybe.”  I could hear the smile in her voice as she said, “I run fast too, but I never leave the house without my lipstick.  I want to make sure they remember why they’re chasing me.” 

I can recall that moment, the setting in which it took place, the look on her face, the color of her lipstick as she put it on her lips.  The sound of her feet on the wooden floorboards as she drug me from the room back into the meadow.  I can remember it as if it were yesterday instead of almost 20 years ago.

She was loved.  She laughed easily and often.  She was beautiful and she glowed from inside.  People were drawn to her.  And I watched her from the shadows with a sense of awe as I could never in a million years imagine what it would feel like to be that adored.  But she always tried to pull me in.  We danced like crazy.  We sang like crazy.  We smoked cloves on the balcony and I listened to her tell stories. 

We never kept in touch.  I don’t think we ever really tried.  It was a friendship that was entirely contained by the magic of the place and time.  And, for me, it was still there.  Encased by the safety that such things innately carry with them.  Or so I thought.  I have no idea who she was when she took her last breath today.  I have no idea if she was married or had children to leave behind. 

And I don’t wish that was different.  This is not a post of regret.  There is, however, a tremendous amount of sadness in the face of losing something so bright, so utterly vibrant.  And there is a sense of deeper loss in knowing that those sacred things, those things that should be left in their velvet containers, are vulnerable.

That there is a sense of vulnerability that is absolute.  With all things and all people.