Time's Up

Do you ever feel things happen for a reason? This time of the year makes me think about the people that I love and those I miss. Because my life is so busy I don't normally take the time to appreciate my feelings for someone. I think everyone does this one time or another. There is always an excuse. My time is up. No more excuses.

I grew up in a military town on the east coast of NC. It was hard to keep friends there because one of the 'perks' of being in the military is moving from base to base and once you got to know someone they were gone. I am laughing to myself right now thinking of the things my best friend Tracy Baker and I used to do in middle school. I was lucky enough to find a friend in Jacksonville that hung around for a while. We would save every penny we could from doing summer chores and go school shopping together. We would buy the same exact outfits down the the accessories and would plan which days we would wear that outfit. I drank my first beer in Tracy's bedroom and believe me we had more than one. I got caught drinking for the first time with Tracy. Not in the actual act, but we were both so sick the next day my parents knew what we had done. We would play dress up and do before and after pictures. As we got older we shared stories about boyfriends and cried on each other's shoulders. In college we kept in touch the best we could but we had the type of relationship that time didn't matter. We were able to pick right back up from the last time we talked. She moved to Washington State to be with her then husband and landed a great job. I would hear from her occasionally and then for some reason we lost touch. One day I checked my Yahoo mail (which I hardly do) and I had an email from her. She had found me on classmates.com. We chatted for a few days and got back up to speed. That is the part that happened for a reason. About a week later I came to work and found an email in my inbox from Tracy's sister asking if I was the Rachel that Tracy went to school with. She asked if it was me to email her back immediately because she had important news. Tracy was gone, she died suddenly of heart failure. If it wasn't for Tracy finding me the couple weeks before I probably would of never known she was gone. I would of never talked to her again. Can you imagine? I guess my point is... If you love someone, tell them you do! If you are mad at someone, reconcile those feelings! If you haven't talked to your best friend in a long time, call!