The Name is the Same, But...

It must be the diet. I have been thinking of old friends from high school and grade school. My parents moved from my home town when I was 23 and I have lost touch with them. (The old friends, not the parents. I know where they are.) I have stayed in touch with friends and classmates from nursing school, but not high school. It doesn't help that my girls high school has been closed for decades and doesn't have reunions, or that women marry and change their last names.
For years I did not want to be found---fat. I would have declined being a contestant on Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune because I had gained so much weight. I didn't want an old boyfriend to recognize me and have an OMG moment. Vanity. Anyway, a few pounds lighter now and looking almost normal, I sat at my keyboard one day feeding in names of old friends trying to get a hit with Google or through the white pages online. I looked where I had last known they were. Time after time I struck out. Finally I decided to look in my home town. Viola, a hit! My old friend Suzanne D., age 62, was living in Little Falls. She must have retired and moved back "home". Some do that. We had visited LF this summer and I looked at ads for houses in the window of a realtor. Houses are much cheaper than here. Not a stretch for a retiree to move back to her hometown and cut living expenses. I was excited to talk to her and a couple of days ago when I had a chunk of time I called. She would be the connection to catch up on news of all the people we had both known. A woman answered and I asked if this was the same Sue D. who had graduated from St. Francis High School in 1962. She said no, this was her married name, but the Sue I was looking for was her husband's cousin. "Wait a minute while I get him", she said. He picked up and gently told me she had died from cancer a couple of years ago.
In recent years, my sister told me my best grade school friend Judy was living in Texas next to her sister in-law, and had died. Two for two. I should feel lucky to be alive and I do, but the message I got was not to neglect people or assume there is always time.