Stories

Old Friends

I am beginning to lose friends.  It makes a man contemplate his mortality.  Knowing I have lived a good life, I am at peace with mine.  I'm ready anytime Death decides to smile at me.

Dad and Don died well before their time.  Mom's death was a sad relief; she suffered so.  Sylvia's death, though she was in her 80s, was a terrible surprise.  That Bill would greave himself to death wasn't.  He lived for that woman.

Finding out that Linda Anderson had died a couple of years before I went searching for her was hard.

Among my classmates, I think George Hallman, our class president, was the first to go a year or two after graduation.  One of the most beautiful girls in my class, Barbara Smith, also died young.  

The passing of Lynne Swindall was tough on me.  She was my first real love.

When Carey Martin, one of my closest childhood and high school friends, died, it was like losing a piece of myself.  I don't have many memories of school that don't include him. 

Finding out that Karen O'Neal had died was a sad moment.  

Other close Woodlawn High School friends who are gone are Walter Whitehead, Doug Vinson, Penny Nunnellee, Roy Ledbetter, Mike Noles, Alan Langston, Mary Lou Edwards, Janice Loggins Davis, and John Manning.

As of our last reunion, forty-three had died.

Now Patti Hughes is gone.

Watching Death take my generation is sobering, but I am smiling back.