Remembering a Friend, 2002, by Tamika Wunsch

From MemoryArchive

Who:Natalie Wiegan
What:Friendship
When:2002
Where:McFarland

Each grade has had their ups and downs, but my eighth grade year seems to have the most vivid memories. This was the grade when I met most of my life-long friends. There was a group of four of us, which we called the Quad. There wasn’t a time that you could see any of us alone. We were all like family. We did everything together. Most of the memories I have are at one fourth of the quads house, Natalie’s. Sleepovers were almost an every night thing, some even on school nights. We all just never wanted to be apart. Natalie and I used to sit every morning and watch the Golden Girls as we ate our cereal and cleaned her house from the night before. One specific day we had decided to make brownies and with young girls that can be a very interesting experience. We were mixing our batter and somehow it got spilt on my new white shirt. I forgot to mention at this time I was a little OCD. Everything had to be perfect for me so I started freaking out and Natalie was the one that spent a half an hour scrubbing my shirt as us three other girls at fresh brownies. In the winter we would spend a lot of time with the guys out on the ice as they were fishing. We were never really wanted because we were so young, but we loved just to be outside in the snow and cold. We would also always drive her snowmobiles around and plenty of times attached a sled to the back so all of us could enjoy the fun at once. Just before the winter was over we decided to jump into the lake and go skinny dipping. I was totally against it because it was so cold, but Natalie conned me into it. She had a way of sweet talking her way into everything because her voice was so friendly and made you feel safe. In the summer we would go boating and yet again she would get me to go skinny dipping. We would sit on the back of the boat all day long just soaking up the sun and talking about any gossip that came to mind. We were living life not caring about anything else in the world, but that all changed when we entered high school. We all started to fall apart in high school. Getting new friends and only saying hi as we passed each other in the hall was normal now. After freshman year Natalie and I started to hang out a lot again, but you could tell she wasn’t the same. She had been extremely depressed ever since her mom died when we were young. It had seemed to get a lot worse with all the stresses of school and boys. Junior year rolled around and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary until one of your friends committed suicide in early February. That put us all through a world of pain and made us all grow up a lot inside. The pain subsided as much as it could and we thought the worst was over until yet another death occurred. In early April Natalie, my friend since middle school, my go-to girl, my somewhat sister, had also killed herself. None of us could have thought this would come, but after we had thought into it some we realized there was a lot of hard things going on in her life. We aren’t mad at her for what we did, but in a way we are. I know it doesn’t make since, but if you have ever lost someone you would know what I mean. Life has moved on without her, but I still think about her everyday and even though I have the memories, it seems the good ones are the ones that hurt the most.