I'm feeling sad today.

I found out a friend from high school days died yesterday. We hadn't kept in touch that much; in fact, I had seen her only a few times since high school, most recently at the yard sale we had last Memorial Day weekend at the old house in S'ville. She bought a comforter from me. She asked what I wanted for it, and I said 50 cents. She forced me to take a dollar instead.

I think her life circumstances were not great but I am not going to speculate on that here. Instead, I am going to remember that she had musical talent. She came to a party we had years ago, in Oneonta. I remember her sitting on the front steps, playing her guitar for a few other friends.

In high school she was "a character." She was always doing or saying something funny. Her life circumstances weren't easy then either, but you rarely saw her with anything but a smile. Like me, she wasn't a part of the whole clique scene. She would never have been accepted into it, but it didn't matter because she was an individual. She had one really close friend, which I think is typical for teenagers. It wasn't me, we weren't in the same grade in school. But I always liked her, and we hung around together sometimes at school, but especially on the bus ride to school and at the town park down the road from where I lived. She helped to brighten what often was either a dull or unpleasant high school experience.

I know this is superficial, but it's true and she wasn't a bit conceited. She was always pretty, and she got prettier and prettier as she aged, in spite of life circumstances. I'm talking model pretty.

I take comfort in knowing that God has something better waiting for her.