There are so many good people over the years that I have lost touch with. I never said goodbye.

I am not speaking of people I am only curious to know what happened to them. I am thinking of good people who really and truly cared about me. and that I cared about too, and yet I lost touch with them.

At the time I may not have been aware that I was losing touch with them. It just happened, and I look back, and we lost touch thirty or forty or more years or whatever it has been. I don’t think I will ever know what happened to these friends. They lived as long as they lived. They had as much happiness as they had. That’s all I can know.

I never said goodbye to these dear people I am thinking of. I don’t think I ever thanked them for what they meant to me. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking.

In a way, I was at a disadvantage because I moved around quite a lot. My two sisters always lived in the same town they lived in. They were always there, and it was easier to keep track of people. Even so, my sister Eleanor would have made an effort to keep connected with everyone.  She might have dumped some people for one offense or another, but she would not have carelessly or negligently let anyone go by the wayside.

I also wonder: If the internet had been around, might I have kept in better touch? But, no, I don’t think that’s the core of it. It is true it was always hard for me to find an envelope or find a stamp, and the internet is so easy and instant, but, even so, some more recent friends I care about have drifted off into the sunset as well.

Of course, if I had kept in touch with everyone I wish I had kept in contact with, that’s all I would be doing. There wouldn’t have been time for anything else.

One person, when I do think of her, I think of deeply. Her name was Wendy Paulus.  She was a near and dear neighbor in Sacramento, and she was simply a wonderful person and friend. I cannot think of a time that Wendy wasn’t wonderful. I never was annoyed with her. There was nothing to be annoyed about. I think I may have written about her before. She was always very good to me. When I didn’t have a car, it was easy for her to offer me her car. She was glad to.

Where I live now in Fairfield, Iowa, you can manage without a car. But in the county of Sacramento, you really couldn’t. The super market was three or four miles away by freeway. Wendy offered me her car whenever I wanted it, and it was easy for her. She didn’t give a thought about it.

She also once sewed matching dresses for my daughter Lauren and me. Lauren was about three. You can imagine the delight that gave me. Anyway, Wendy and I liked each other, and the friendship was easy.

Later I returned to Massachusetts. And I heard that Wendy had left her husband and three little sons, and run off with a neighbor’s husband (which one I never knew or just couldn’t let it in) and no one knew where they were. Oh, my Wendy.

This is one time when I was not judgmental. I couldn’t be when it was Wendy. Judgment didn’t even enter in for me. Please don’t you be judgmental about my friend Wendy either.

Wendy, I hope life has been good to you, and I hope you know how much you meant to me and mean to me still.  You were the best.  I love you still. Remembrance of you has carried me through more than one hard time.

I wonder why today you are so in my awareness. Has your soul come to visit me? Godspeed, Wendy, my friend.