This is what I was waiting for me when I opened my inbox tonight:
As a very belated e-mail, I just wanted to send you a quick note saying it was great to see you and update you on what's been happening with my life. As there is no easy way to say this, here it goes - unfortunately, Mike passed away on Christmas Day (not sure what happened yet - I'm still waiting for the autopsy report), so here I am at 30 years old a widow. Unfuckingbelievable - is it not. Anyway, I'm moving to my fathers in Arlington, VA for awhile to get my life in order. I was offered a new job in Rockville and start that on Feb. 2. So many changes, so little time. Hope this e-mail finds you and your family well. Talk to you soon.
Kelly
Copied and pasted from the actual letter. May I just say: What the fuck?
Kelly was a high school friend that I lost touch with over the years. I looked her up on whim last summer, when I was back in my hometown and we hooked up for dinner and drinks. She was telling me how she had just gotten married 8 months before to a kid we went to high school with, whom I didn't know.
You know what I remember most about that dinner? We were discussing being married, and I was feeling so superior because I had been married for close to five years and had already been a mother for a few years; whereas she had only been married a few months and was hoping to try to get pregnant soon.
"Oh" I said "It'll happen, just give it time." Did I make her feel inferior? Or like her marriage wasn't as good as mine because I had a real marriage and she was just getting started? Do you think, for even a moment, she appreciated her life a little less next to the oh-so radiant glamour of mine? Did my petty pleasures take a moment of her limited time with her spouse and make it any less than what it should have been or maybe she saw past my pompous, self serving, insecure bullshit and left appreciating what she had more, rather than less.There's a lesson somewhere in this for me, folks.