Losing BFFs

Natalie Kon-yu co-editored a book, Just Between Us, in May 2013. She and her group of other co-editors collected non-fiction and fiction for the book, looking at the “myth of the BFF”, which I have lived through.

Kon-yu told of her friendship with a woman for 20 years, who then stopped talking to her: “She stopped returning my calls; she ignored my messages.” I sort of lost my BFF from school – we had been close since kindy, and right through school until I left there after Form 5 while she stayed on for another year and eventually went to a university course for nursing. She was the only one I had ever known through school and still kept up with after school, even for a short while. I still saw her when she moved to Auckland. I stopped seeing her when she moved to Canada. I didn’t see her again for around 25 or 30 years. By that stage she had a young boy of her own (no partner), a property she had inherited and a lot of dollars from her work as a real estate person in Canada. I shouldn’t have felt jealous – but I was.

She came to my second marriage – I haven’t seen her again since then… 16 years ago.

I made quite a few friends from a friendship website around the start of this century. Some of those, 20 years later, are still friends on Facebook. I went over to NZ for my daughter-in-law’s funeral, and met up with one of my friends, Kris, for coffee. We had a lovely chat. I’ve spoken to Ruth, Karin, Sharnie, Donna, Cilla and Sarah, but I lost some of the others I had met… I thought I’d kept up with them, but seems I didn’t.

After my second husband left me, at the start of 2013, I moved into a different, smaller house on my own. I joined a trivia group at the Glen hotel – I have forgotten most of those I had met, but Debs and Taylor are still friends. Debs had a brain aneurysm in 2013, and shortly after that so did I. Mine was diagnosed in July 2013 and I went in for surgery in April 2014 – and I also had my stroke. Debs had looked after my dogs and I am still grateful to her. Most of the people I now know also had a brain aneurysm, and I built a small group of friends from them – Ailsa, Jacki, Judy, others I forget their names.

My closest friends have grown and fallen most of my life – from my 5 at high school to about 10 in Wellington before I joined the Army, to those at the skate club where my son and daughter skated, to the online friendship group and onwards to the brain injury group.

These days I don’t really see any friends; I spent most days at home on my own. Actually, the only one I called my BFF was my American bulldog, passed away when she was very old. She died two months ago this year, and I have her ashes. And ashes of my last other 3 dogs.

I’m still wondering what a BFF now is. Maybe I should read Natalie Kon-yu’s book.

Bundy, age 13, d. April 2015; Jordan, age 16, d. March 2018