Good Byes we never get to say

Perhaps it’s the Pandemic and the daily deaths that have me thinking of the End. As in, yikes, you mean it’s over? But wait, I’m not ready! A few more years, and I’ll be good….

I recently found out about high school friends who have passed away much too young. I was particularly saddened by the death of a boy who was a great friend, a lot of fun, and terribly shy at the same time. I’d wanted him to ask me to the prom in the world’s worst way, but he never did. I went with someone else. His name, I don’t remember. But I remember Rob Shields.

Many years (and I mean eons!) later we connected through a new Facebook group for my high school. (Which was overseas and no longer exists as a DoD school.) I called, we chatted, and he sounded just the same. He was still working in DC at the time, but soon after retired to live in Central America and raise horses and dogs, as I recall. I told him about my little family, my great husband, my shift in career from lawyer to writer, and it was as if we’d been chatting every day for all those years. Still friends.

Another member of the class below us told me, when I called to give him an update on Rob for the school’s next reunion, that he was gay. I have no idea why he told me that, but it answered a lot of questions I’d always had. How could such a great guy have not been interested in me as a sixteen year old? I mean, sheesh, I was at my hottest! It’s been downhill ever since, LOL. Not too much later, Rob died. From pneumonia, but really, it was AIDS.

Damn,damn, and double damn. How I wished I’d kept in contact after that one phone call. Just to remind him (and me) of when we were young and naive. I just today saw a picture of the older Rob, and saw in those eyes the boy he’d been, the one who made me feel as if I could survive the awful high school into which I’d been thrown, my third school in two years.

He was always kind to me, and to everyone else. I wish I’d told him how grateful I was.