It's been 23 years to the day since I lost one of my best friends my senior year of high school. She and her boyfriend were coming home from a date and she was sitting in the middle seat wearing only a lap belt. They crested a hill and found themselves facing a car in their lane. He was playing chicken with his friend. They lost that day.
Her boyfriend was hurt, but survived. She was nearly cut in two by the lap belt, and was in ICU for 22 days before she died.
A few things stand out from those awful days. I went to see her at the hospital, and it hurt so bad to see her laying there. I remember being there the night before she died. I remember going home and crying out to God that 'His will be done.' I was holding on to her, you see. I had lost so many that I loved already and was not willing to go through it again. But I told God, Your will, not mine, Lord. I am under no illusion that her final breath had anything to do with me. I just know God called her home.
The next morning, my dad woke me up to tell me. I went to school after getting ready, and today, I cannot imagine why I even tried to put make-up on. The halls were so quiet. You could have heard a pin drop.
The boy who hit them that night went to our biggest rival school and a week after her funeral, we played them in basketball. He was there that night. I have no idea why he had the courage to show up, but he did. I told a friend I wanted to talk to him, and my friend told me I was crazy. I felt this pull, like two opposing magnets when you are trying to separate them. It wasn't anything I was able to ignore.
I walked away from my friends and went to the end of the bleachers where he was sitting. I had one of my friends who went to his school get his attention and we went outside. I told him that I wanted to hate him for taking her away from us. I told him about her, who she was, what she was like. He started crying. He couldn't talk clearly because his jaw was wired shut. He had broken it in the accident. I told him that she wouldn't have wanted me or anyone else to hate him, but to forgive him. She knew he would have to live with what he did for the rest of his life, and that was punishment enough.
Hatred gets you nowhere, but a life of misery. I hope that boy went on to live. I know he remembers that day in December 1992, when he caused an accident that changed so many lives forever. I hope he did something with his life. I don't remember his name anymore. I'm sure I can search online and find it, but I don't want to. I want to remember the peace I felt that night when I talked to him and told him what she would have wanted me to say, what she would have said.
I miss her.. When I hear 'it's been a long road, without you my friend, but I'll tell you all about it when I see you again' I think of her, and one other. I miss them so much sometimes that I cannot bear it, but I continue on, to live so that they can be remembered and live through me.
Losses like this, and the one that happened later that same year, can change a person. I had one friend who saw me through it all. I'm not sure she really understood, even to this day, the extent that I changed.
I let go of God in that time. I just decided He had forgotten about me and left me. The truth is, He was ALWAYS there... He is always with me. I was the one who walked a different path. I did that for several years, until I just couldn't stand it any longer. I hated who I had become. I felt the need to destroy myself, and in doing so, I found my way back to God again. Broken, suffering and in need of my Savior. He still loved me - loves me - no matter the things I had done while I was absent from His presence.
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