Remember your first best friend

A message on a candy wrapper instructed me to remember my first best friend. I couldn't remember that far back, so I decided I'd better eat another candy.

The message on the second candy wrapper instructed me to remember my first best friend. So I ate even another candy. But maybe the wrappers were trying to send an important message. So I will dedicate this post to remembering a first best friend.

Julie was my best friend in first grade. Amanda and I were friends in kindergarten. But if you go back as far as I can remember, there was Christopher.

Was Christopher really a best friend? I don't remember. But he and I had preschool together -- two years of it. And then we were in the same kindergarten class, and the same first grade class. He would have been in my second grade class as well -- his name was on the roll that first day.

His mom and mine were friends. I remember that they worked out at least one playdate. I remember going over to Christopher's house one afternoon, along with my brother Bryan. I was probably in kindergarten, and Bryan in first grade.

Christopher had a little sister, just one year younger than me. I remember that when we arrived at Christopher's house, it was a little messy. The boys went somewhere else to play. I played dolls with Christopher's little sister in the living room. I don't remember her name, but I remember having a fine time, in spite of the fact that she was a year younger, and the house was a little messy.

When we were in first grade, Christopher's sister went to school next door in the kindergarten room. She would come to our classroom door first thing after school, before any of the moms arrived with their cars, so that she and Christopher could go home together.

By first grade, though, Julie was my best friend, and I didn't think much of Christopher or his sister, and our moms didn't arrange playdates anymore.

That first day of second grade, Julie was in another class. But Christopher was in mine again. Or at least he should have been. He wasn't there that first day. Nor the second day. I don't remember how many days had passed before I heard the story.

Late that summer, Christopher and his sister had been playing at their grandmother's house, and the sister had followed a ball into the road. Christopher would have seen the car hit her. He would have seen the ambulance come and take her body away. Would he have understood? His distraught parents could not be comforted. They pulled Christopher out of public school. To hold him a little closer. To spend the moments they had with him, no longer trusting that those moments would last.

I remember telling my mother this story I had heard. I remember her eyes immediately filling with tears. I remember, at age six, being surprised at her strong emotion. My mother had only met Christopher's sister once, that time when Bryan and I went over for a playdate.

As I grew older, of course, I began to understand the tears. By the time I started junior high, I had a new baby brother myself, and I found that I loved him so much it hurt. I could bring tears to my eyes just with the thought of losing him. That year, I think I spotted Christopher in the halls of my school again. We were no longer in classes together, but his parents must have started the long process of letting him go by then.

My own little boy is the age Christopher's sister would have been, and writing the story brings an ache to my heart, and makes me want to hold him close.

Remember your first best friend.