Celebration 4 Mandi Mayden Dersch

Celebration 4
My childhood friend Mandi Mayden.

We were inseparable.  We wore matching clothes.  We would wear our hair the same way.  We talked about boys.  We sang at the top of our lungs to all the boys to men songs.  We were best friends.  We loved each other one day, hated each other the next.  If she wasn't at my house, I was at hers.  All my Jr. high yearbooks she wrote that we would be best friends forever..........then life happens.

Today I'm sorry to type that she is not even one of my facebook friends.  I did try to add her, but only because I knew she would be one of the people I wanted to celebrate.  Our lives just went separate ways.  I don't know of any one reason that it did, at least nothing that I'm aware of, it just happened.  It's strange to me to see her in public nowadays and not even a hello is passed between us, when we used to finish each other sentences.

She married.  I married.  She became a mother.  I became a mother.  Jobs.  School.  Just Life Happened.

Most of my memories with her includes adventure.  We stuck out of houses to be with boyfriends.  We drove around so we could smoke cigarettes.  We spied on cheating boyfriends.  We went skinny dipping.  We made prank calls.  We toilet papered neighbors.  We were a little mischievous.  We only did a few things that were illegal.

Maybe that's why we distant ourselves.  Both of us remember those times and those memories and choose to be a different person.  Our only identity we have with each other is the past mistakes, past dreams we had for our future, and past disappointments.

I don't know.

I do know what she taught me in our friendship.  Always follow your dreams.  Since she was little, she dreamed of being a nurse.  She would study for numerous hours.  She would go to school as time and money allowed.  She finally became a nurse after years of waiting.  If she is anything like the friend I had in Jr. High, I KNOW she is awesome.  She has a compassionate spirit, a crazy sense of humor, and a beautiful smile that can calm the storm.  In her honor, I made a special delivery to two people that are outstanding Nurses.