Sorry - in Memoriam Sandra

When I was at secondary school, I had a best friend called Sandra. She was the first person to sit next to me on my first day there in my first lesson, Maths. I had moved to the area just after everyone else's first day at secondary school, so knew no one and was the new girl, just days after the first term started. I was sat at the front as everyone traipsed in from an assembly I hadn't been at - all the form filling etc for my start at school - and as the rows behind me filled up and the fingers pointing and hushed whispers started, I wondered if anyone would ever sit down in the seat next to me, but she did and we became friends.

Sandra was kind-hearted and sharing. She lived in the same village as me although a few miles away and she had two younger siblings - a brother and a sister. I once visited her house but didn't go again, looking back, I think, because I felt, and was made to feel, embarassed by the comparative riches we had compared to her family- their house wasn't dirty or anything like that, but the atmosphere was estranged, felt but unspoken rows brewing under the surface and I didn't feel welcome, particularly from her dad, but Sandra came to our house quite a few times and we listened to records on my stereo in my room. We spent most of the first year at school together and then in the second year, classes were streamed for ability and I was in the top sets and she wasn't. We still saw each other but our paths were starting to take us away, although we did go on a school trip to Greece for a week, sharing a room, and the adventure.

I went to sixth form college, Sandra got a job, but it was with her and our then boyfriends that I belatedly celebrated my 18th birthday at our local club. We kept in contact - my parents divorced, she rented her own house with her boyfriend and she came to see me leave my mum's house when I was 22 and I moved to Malvern, 200 miles away. I had an address for her, but my cards were no longer replied to and the friendship fell a bit by the wayside. I wrote to her mum with an invite to Sandra to come to my 1st wedding in 1990 as I was unsure of Sandra's address by then but got no reply. When I married again in 1995, I tried to get back in contact to invite her then but failed. I now know why...

When I took up family history, I looked up school friends to see who had married etc and Sandra was one I looked up. In about Nov 1994 she married, but sadly her death is also recorded that month - perhaps a near-deathbed marriage. She was 28. I discovered this in 2002.

I don't know what she died of - I'm guessing either cancer or problems with her lungs as she has a childhood weakness there, although I remember being shocked that she smoked, but then both her parents were heavy smokers. I also don't know where she was buried, as since that discovery I have beaten myself up, unsure of how to contact her parents. I can only put this out on the ether and hope. She was in my dreams last night, which why this poured out today. I'm sorry I didn't persevere with staying in touch and I'm so sorry I didn't see you off on your last journey, I feel such a poor friend in the end. It will always be a regret, but at least (as the tears run) I have shared her with you now. I have only one friend now from my schooldays - we exchange Christmas cards only now, but that's something - I got fed up with others, of me being the only one who was in touch. I still send out far more cards than I ever receive back, but a Christmas list of over 100 cards out did become too much in these straitened days. Anyway, this is my cyber flowers in memoriam to a kind soul who had the courage to sit down by me, one day.