Losing my past

The phone rang last night at 11pm. Since I haven't been sleeping well lately, I wasn't asleep--but figuring that it was BJ, who used to have trouble remembering the two hour difference between mountain and eastern time, I answered it in my best groggy/cranky voice. It wasn't BJ. It was my dear, old friend Mark Fenstermaker telling me that his brother Jared, my high school sweetheart and first love, passed away early yesterday morning.

It's difficult to describe the sense of rootlessness that follows such a shock. Perhaps it's the cumulative effect of losing so many loved ones over the last few years, but I have this inescapable sensation that I'm losing my grip on my past. This feeling blindsided me for the first time a couple of years ago when I reconnected with my dear old high school buddy, Peggy Johnson Wagner. We hadn't talked in years but managed to find each other again and spent the better part of an evening catching up by long distance phone call. When I hung up the phone, my first instinct was to tell somebody about all the changes in her life and the way she has overcome so much adversity. And then it hit me. There was nobody left to tell. My Dad was gone, my Mom was gone, Randy was gone--all the people who knew me best or knew me when Peggy and I were kids--nobody knew about this friendship. Nobody was left who knew that part of me.

So I found myself on the computer, late at night, googling old friends in an effort to find some of the folks I knew in high school and college. And then I got blindsided again. In a search for my first college sweetheart, Mike Farr, I found his name on a list of alumni from Duke University Law School Class of 1983. But his name was at the bottom of the list, under a banner that read "Classmates who are no longer with us." Mike passed away in San Mateo, California, in 1997.

This is not to say that ALL my old friends and family have left me. Although my oldest brother, Mike, passed away in 1995, my big brother Chris is still very much alive and well. But Chris was grown and out of the house by the time I hit high school. As for friends, I'm supremely grateful to still be in touch with Mark, who was actually responsible for setting Randy and me up on our first date--and with Peggy, who was responsible for introducing me to the church--and with Tony Cano, who was Randy's roommate when Randy and I started dating. But they are the only ones who remember me before I grew up--the only ones who knew the person I was in 1973. They're my only links to my Palm Desert past.

SO--I've gotta talk a little about these two fellas who've left us way too soon. I feel like I NEED to, since my friendships with them now exist only in my mind. If THAT's not a scary thought, I don't know what is...

I met Jared when I was just 13. I was gangly and awkward and sporting braces with those gawd-awful rubber bands that tended to catapult across the room at THE most inopportune times. I was, frankly, amazed that he took a second look at me, but he did, and we "went steady" all through high school. To the left is our prom picture--below is his senior picture.

I remember he drove a little green Datsun pickup truck and he loved vacationing in Idaho--I think the desert never really suited him and he was glad to move back north after high school. His family had some land in Anza, a high desert community between Palm Springs and San Diego. It was always cooler up there and we used to drive up there whenever we could and spend the day wandering the property, talking, and snoozing in the back of the truck. It was a peaceful place and I loved being there with him. We were both big John Denver fans and "My Sweet Lady" still takes me instantly back to Anza--it was "our" song. He moved on to greener pastures not long after high school, but long before I was ready to let him go. In fact, I dropped out of college briefly midway through my first year because I was so homesick for him. It wasn't until my second year in college, on semester abroad in England, that I finally realized he wasn't the one for me and then I spent years telling myself he was a lousy boyfriend, which really wasn't true. We were both just young and overly dramatic. I was lucky to end up with a life that was really quite perfect (until recently), but his was much different. He wrote me late last year and described failed marriages and difficult relationships with his children, but he spoke of it all with characteristic good nature--not a trace of self pity. I really wanted to see him again. I'm really sorry that I never will.

After that failed first semester in college, I managed to tear myself away from home the following September and gave BYU another shot. It was a good decision. There was something magical about my second round at the "Y." Almost immediately I found myself having the time of my life with a bunch of kids from my student branch. I don't even remember exactly when I met Michael Don Farr, but my roommate, Jeanine Hagler, and his roommate, Joe Bourgea, and I started spending a ton of time together. No pairing off, just hanging out along with a bunch of other kids from our branch. I think I had a crush on him pretty much right from the start, and by the end of the year we had convinced ourselves that we were serious about each other. We weren't right for each other, but that didn't stop us from having a blast planning our futures as law partners.

(Yeah, like I could EVER be a lawyer!)

We figured we'd call our law firm "Farr, Farr, and Farther." We didn't have an "our song"--when he'd call me on the phone, the first thing I'd hear would be an impromptu falsetto rendition of the "Oh sweet mystery of life, at last I found you" song from Young Frankenstein! It fit our wacky relationship perfectly. The night before my 19th birthday, I got a message telling me Mike was looking for me and to call him back. When I did, he told me he wanted to be the first one to wish me a happy birthday so he took me to a late night movie in Salt Lake so we'd be together at midnight when the new day arrived. It was one of the most romantic things anybody's ever done for me! Here's a picture of Mike sitting on my bed, being his usual goofy self...

We wrote each other faithfully throughout his mission to Quebec, and writing that "Dear John" letter when I met Randy was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do. It was the right thing, of course, and we were able to get together again with our respective spouses while Randy and I were at BYU--it was great to see him so happy. Now I often think of his wife and what she went through just a few years before I did.

I miss you guys.