"I Am Getting Tired of Looking at the Obituaries"

That's what Mike called and told me earlier today. I said, "Who died this time?" He said, "This time it's one of your friends."

I opened up the paper and looked. This time it is a friend of mine that I used to live with when we were younger. When I first moved out from my mom and dad's house I moved in with her. We had a lot of good times together. In fact, I was with her when I met Mike.

I'll admit that back then I used to party a lot, and her and I did some major partying together. Unfortunately, she took the partying a little farther than I did.

A few years after we no longer lived together, there was a period of three or four months that I couldn't get in contact with her. Her phone was disconnected and when I drove to her apartment it was empty. Finally, she called me and told me what was going on. She had met a guy, and for some reason he convinced her it would be a good idea to try heroin. Even though she was a beautiful girl, she had a low self-esteem, and whenever a guy was involved she would do whatever they wanted her to do. She ended up getting addicted.

She went through a lot of hard years. I know she went to jail once; although she never told me what it was for and I never asked. I had my suspicions. She ended up getting pregnant. She did her best to get off drugs while she was pregnant. Her doctor put her on methadone even while she was pregnant. When the baby was born it was taken away from her and her mom gained custody of her. Over the next year my friend had to prove she was a fit mother, and she eventually earned custody of her daughter back. A few years later she got pregnant again. Her son was born just a few months after Carson was. After I had Carson she came to see him. That was the last time I saw her. I talked to her several times on the phone and told her to be sure to let me know when she had her baby. He was born several months later but she never called me. I called her and talked to her once after that and I went and bought some things for the baby, and she never called me back. Then she abruptly moved and I couldn't get in touch with her. Over the next few years I talked to her mom several times and would get updates about her. She was doing fairly well. She was from a small town and she was living near her parents. Her mom always told me, "She'll be so excited to talk to you. I tell her to call you." She never called. I sent her Christmas cards with pictures of my kids and a note with my address and phone numbers and told her to call me, but she never did. Eventually I gave up trying to get a hold of her. She had my address and my phone numbers and if she wanted to contact me she could. There's only so much one person can do to hold up a friendship when the other person won't participate.

I don't know what she died from. I don't know if she went back on drugs, or if it was the methadone that she had been on to stay off of heroin, or something else.

I'm trying to decide whether I should go to the viewing or just send a card to her parents. It is tonight and it is about an hour away from here. I haven't seen her parents in years and they probably wouldn't recognize me. I can't go to the graveside service tomorrow because I have to work. It's a hard decision.

It's just such a sad thing. She leaves behind her two children. Hopefully they will be all right and know that even though their mom had some hard times, she was very smart, funny and beautiful.