Brittany

Today as I was walking in the park someone asked me if I was memorizing lines as I was walking...and yesterday my friend died. It was such a huge shock to me - my roomie told me about it as I was sitting on my exercise ball, and yeah, I almost didn't believe her at first. So for the whole day I was kind of quiet, but mostly I was convincing myself that it wasn't really Brittany who had died because the paper this morning said that it was three people all in their mid-twenties, and I knew that she was only nineteen - I guess the paper was wrong.

Brittany was definitely one of my best friends from grades 5 to 7, we hung out together a lot because she only lived one bay over from me. I remember how unfair I used to think it was when my parents used to make me come home at 8:00pm from playing at her house, but she could stay out till 9:00pm! We used to buile snow forts and tunnels in winter, and walk to a from school together across the field. She was the first person to introduce me to email when we would email with her cousin Laurel. Oh yeah, and we always used to play this computer called Treasure Mountain (or whatever it was called) - that's probably the only computer game that I don't die in after 5 seconds!

In summer we would eat her mom's sorrel leaves from the garden and make boats out of milk cartons to sail down the ditches. And then we would have these massive collections of those sparkly rocks from the railroad tracks (which my mom used to secretly throw out!). I used to watch the Jetsons with her on our many sleepovers...which also included hot-tubbing! Brittany and Meagan and I used to practice skipping and all of our skipping partner tricks for hours, just hoping to make it onto the skipping team - eventually we all made it. I used to twist my ankle a lot during those times, so her family would eat supper with me downstairs since climbing stairs was hard then...and there was the time that Britt and I decided we should make up some menus and serve her family supper. We even walked around with these tea-towels around our arms like the professionals - but I think we ended up serving them soggy noodles!

And then there was the time we decided to make up a neighborhood newspaper and deliver it to everyone on her bay. I wrote the stories (which were continued from week to week) and she drew the pictures (amazing artist) and made up the games...we even bought chocolate bars for the prizes! Oh yeah, Britt, Megs and I also made up a newspaper for our school - which lasted for all of one issue, but we got to photocopy one copy for every family represented in the entire school - so exciting! We used to play kick the can in the dark, and drew with sidewalk chalk for hours on her driveway...as well as played Mennonite Madness at her birthday parties!

I can still remember her phone number and the color of her eyes...she came to Rock Lake with me once and we were so excited because we had walkie-talkies - so we both took separate pathways in the bush and made up these stories about hearing a bear in the bush and how we were going to get away from it and rescue each other...she was amazing at math, I used to wish that when our teacher changed the seating plan in grade 5 that I would be able to sit next to her because then I would get all the answers right! During grade 5 we also started band, and I remember we were both going to play french horn so that we could sit next to each other - but then the school didn't have any more for me to rent, so I ended up playing drums and she played french horn...

On one of our sleepovers we were reading our Bibles and then we had this conversation about how we decided which book in the Bible we were going to read - and that time she had decided to just open it up and whichever book she opened it up to, that was the one she was going to read at that time...I think it was Jeremiah. Oh yeah, our cat also had kittens one time and then she Britt got one of our kittens (for her birthday I think) and she named him Smokey...

So those are my memories right now, I sure did not get a whole lot of studying done today as I was walking in the park...she was someone who definitely influenced my life when I was younger, someone I had so much fun with! So why? Well the only answer I've found so far is...

Isaiah 57:1-2:
The righteous pass away; the godly often die before their time. And no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. For the godly who die will rest in peace.