“I can’t believe you’ve forgotten me!” the voice said on the other end of the phone line.
We were three, and we were inseparable. Three very different girls who were brought together by fate during their early teenage years and formed a friendship. There was the taller-larger gregarious one, the girl with a heart of gold and jewellery to match. Then the older one with sexual experience to recount, and a passion for psychoanalysis that ensured we had long and deep conversations on the phone. And the shy quiet one, the born-thinker and analyser, the one of tiny stature who quickly became the confidante of the group.
Our parents inevitably became friends and encouraged our socialising. There was complete trust on all their parts; little they knew about the early sexual experiences whispered quietly during innocent sleepovers. And as we developed throughout our adolescence and entered adulthood, the strong bond between us remained.
Life events got in the way of seeing each other with regularity. Some of these were atrociously life-changing, leaving indelible scars on altered personalities, or silent but enduring pain that was understood but not shared. Others were happier events that shifted priorities of our leisure time.
Naturally, the frequency of communication dwindled but all it took was one chance meeting, one phone call, or one large celebration to reaffirm the bond and continuity of our friendship.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” I told her amidst an overflow of emotion. “I’ve forgotten your voice!”
And what followed was one of those early adolescent phone conversations, this time without the whispers to hide information from our parents’ ears, without the boys we secretly liked, without the angst of growing up. We were grown up.
“I have some bad news,” she said.
We were three. We are still three. One of us had lost a parent.
We will soon see each other again. And I know, as much as the three of us know, that this loss will echo and mirror with unspoken parallels throughout our hearts.
We are three.
