Julie M: A Heart that Lasts

There was a girl in Paris
Whom he sent a letter 2
Hoping she would answer back
Now wasn't that a fool
Hardy notion on the part of a
Sometimes lonely musician
Acting out a whim is only good
4 a condition of the heart. Prince-- Condition of the Heart

I found out last night that a friend of mine from high school died last Saturday. She was my age-- 35. She didn't have any kids of her own, but was a step mom, so there's a fifteen year old out there who has to deal with that loss.

I met Julie and the other girls in this post when we were about fifteen--girls in band with a lot of dreams and crushes on boys who never noticed us.

Julie had some sort of heart condition, apparently, and had a massive heart attack. It's terribly sad to hear something like this. I graduated in a fairly large class of kids at a pretty big school (I think we were 4A). So I'm sure that over the almost 15 years since graduation there have been other deaths that I haven't heard about, but Julie was a friend who I guess I always thought I'd see again in casual situations. The 20 year reunion maybe (if I go.) Someday when we're old and grey-haired old ladies comparing grandkid photos and laughing over the eyeshadow we were wearing in our senior photos.

I've been quite practical about it-- you know, if you have a congenital heart defect of some sort, age doesn't really have anything to do with your life-span. 18 year old great athletes sometimes keel over on the court from their heart just failing. It happens. But I do still keep thinking about the smiling girl I knew, who had a little brown mole on her face (I can't remember exactly where. I wish I had a picture, but my yearbooks are all lost to a flood in a bad storage shed long ago). I keep seeing her in the stands during the football games we were always forced to attend (as marching band members) but weren't forced to watch (as clarinet players.) Highlighted by the ultra bright lights of football stadiums. Always smiling.

We were all in band, clarinet players. Julie was one of the girls who practiced, and was as a result much higher ranked than me (I never practiced... lazy, good-for-nuthin' kids these days). Julie was blonde, with a curly short haircut, and very blue, sincere eyes. She had a little thing with her front teeth-- I can't remember now if it was a gap or just one of those slightly off-line things-- but it was very cute. I remember her teeth seeming so white compared to her skin tone--she was one of those Florida blondes that had such white blonde hair but could tan well. Tall, thin, and always very sweet. She was part of a group of friends that were my band friends-- Sandy, Jill, Julie, sometimes Karon (who was younger, and not a clarinet player). We would always line up next to each other when it didn't matter (most times it did-- if you're marching in formation, you have to go to "your spot.") But in parades, or informal things, we could stand together. Clusters of girls in red-toy-soldier uniforms. Our band, the Fort Walton Beach "Mighty Vikings," wore those hot in summer, cold in winter red toy-soldier-like uniforms with white criss-crossed belts, with a black "cowboy style" hat and a long white ostrich plume out the back. I remember I stole one of the plumes my senior year, stuck it under my jacket. I just wanted one. They smelled unaccountably like maple syrup.

The hats always crushed our late 80s hair dos, no matter how much grape-scented Aussie scrunch spray we put on it. We would say "How does my hair look" and squint at each other. Then, smart-assedly, we would begin to describe it: "Curly, blonde, about this short, on top of your head"..... We knew it looked hat-crushed and sweaty.

I saw Julie at the 10 year HS reunion back in 1998. I had just finished my MA, was thin, wearing my cute purple silk suit; I felt accomplished and happy (except when some chick I didn't know very well called me by the name of my arch rival.... aaaaaaigh! and Bill S. thought I was married to my high school evil ex!). But Andrew was there, looking as gorgeous as ever, and so tall. It was interesting to be back in Florida, meeting again these people who we spent so much time with when we were young. Some of them I didn't really want to see (they were just as mean as they'd been back then, picking on poor Mandy M., again).

My best friend J and her not-yet-then-but-now-husband C were there too. J's "chorus friends" weren't really turned out at the reunion, but I had a bunch of the band friends there and so they attached to our "band geek" group. Poor things. The band geek vibe can cause serious damage to those who aren't ready for it. :) We all sat at a big round table with Julie, Sandy, their husbands, as well as trombone player and happy new mom Cathy M, (whose husband wasn't there). There was a lot of laughing, and remembering. I think we asked each other how our hair looked, smiling.

Julie worked in middle-management for Kentucky Fried Chicken. She seemed really happy. Both Sandy & Julie lived in Florida, still, and I think they kept in pretty close contact. It was Sandy who let me know, through Jill, that Julie had died. The email news crept along, and she's been gone almost a week before I knew.

It made me wonder a bit, who else? I really did keep in touch with the people who were closest to me in high school. I wasn't a popular kid, but I had plenty of casual friends, people I had looked forward to seeing at the reunion (but most of them weren't there). But who out there of the casual friends I had hoped to see again, hoped to have a nice simple chat with at gatherings like this in the future, is gone? Irreplaceable? Leaving behind families, or hot and bright like gunpowder lit and smoky?

Jill said, in her email, that she was a little freaked out by it all. Jill, who has five kids and a smiling husband in her pictures. Two little girls who absolutely look just like the girl I met when we were both new to the junior high school, sitting in band. Jill, who was the first person I ever heard say the word "Killer" as an adjective. as in: That's killer! Ah, the eighties!

I wanted to write something about Julie that would be poignant, but I find that I mostly have to write about all of us. Those fifteen-year-old girls who would yell out at football games the name of the football player boy I had a crush on, and then when he turned to look, point at me. The trips on a schoolbus at night after a late game, napping with our heads on the seat in front of us.

Mostly I remember a lot of smiles from a girl who had a great heart, no matter what the evidence ultimately proves.