Reflections: Tell People How You Feel About Them While They're Still Alive

I just greeted an old friend in Facebook a happy birthday. As I browsed the birthdays celebrants' page of this billion dollar app in my phone, I saw another old friend celebrated her birthday a day before. Except she was not celebrating because she's dead.

She was my first best friend in high school. Her name is Ria. It was way back in 1993, my first day in high school was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. New faces, new school. I was nervous and anxious, extremely shy and totally awkward. Yet this petite girl with a friendly smile spoke to me and asked for my name. She was my first friend in high school.

She was bubbly and happy. Although she was not quite like one of the typical girls I had made friends with, we were more of the opposite personalities, but we became friends in an instant. She was easy to get along with. She was the friendliest girl I had ever met.

Like I said, she was my opposite of personality. She was extroverted, so she made a lot of friends easily. She lost her mother at a young age, and have two younger siblings. The first time I cut classes in high school, we went to her house and played some board game and did some other things girls our age do when together in a house when the parents were not around. I can still remember her happy face that time.

A couple of months later then, she spent little times with me. She had made friends with the other girls in class, the more "outgoing and loud" kind of girls. One time, it was during our school's foundation day, she called me out along the corridor and greeted me with a loud "Hi Claire!" beaming with a big smile in that sweaty pinkish face. She was drunk. She admitted that she and her friends had a few shot in someone's place. Another time, in our PE activity where we had to present a dance presentation, the class was divided into several groups. My group presented a folk dance. Ria's group presented a debutante's kind of dance where they rented a formal gown. After their presentation, she told us that all of them girls agreed not to wear a bra in those gowns. She really seemed to enjoy all those crazy things she'd been doing. But then, she was a kind girl.

I never saw her again in our second year in high school. I didn't know what happened to her. But I missed her. She was adventurous yet kind, bold but caring. 

In 2011, I got a message from her in Facebook. She asked if we could meet together with my other two best friends in high school. But it never happened. Until one day I heard she died. I'll never see her again, and there's no way I can tell her that she was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. I never got the chance to thank her for the happy high school experiences we have shared.

To Ria Lou, wherever you are, I never got the chance to tell you this, but you are an amazing person. Thank you for becoming a part of my life. Thank you...

xoxo,
Claire