Wendy Guckamus

It was a long time ago. Long enough to erode the delicate details that make memories etch themselves in small places of the heart. Dimmed by all those other things that clutter my brain. And yet, there's a feeling I can’t forget. Of a friend.

The time was back in the days of Junior High and High School, a time of social awkwardness that is born of adolescence. There is a desire to be like everyone else and the reality that you are not. Anything different made you weird and developing friends even harder.  I was the kid from Dorothy Nolan. One of five or six girls in my elementary class who were tossed in with kids who had gone to larger in town schools - Caroline and Division Street elementary schools. The town kids knew half the mixed population of the new seventh grade class at the Lake Avenue school. These kids had neighbors down the street. I had friends across the field or up the hill.

To develop new friends, I got involved playing volleyball and other after school activities, but living out in the country made it tough. We had one car and my mother did not drive. So when the bus rolled down Lake Avenue if I wasn’t on it walking home was a realistic alternative. It was a six miles slog which gave me plenty of time to develop reasons why I missed the bus. Trust me, there were no acceptable excuses for such irresponsibility.  Hanging with friends didn't cut it.

On the days I played volleyball I took the activity bus home, a late running bus that traveled the rural roads scattering kids like wind scatters leave. I was always one of the last kids dropped off.  The activity bus didn’t come close to the house.  I had to walk up the hill from either Danda’s store or Winslow’s bar. The roads, less traveled in those days, were black ribbons that ran through even darker woods. In Upstate New York it is dark before 5 pm on winter nights.

But a few friendship blossomed.  Oddly, I can’t remember how or when I met Wendy Guckamus.  I think she was a friend of another friend. We became friends. There aren’t a lot of details that I remember. I just remember the friendship.  We went to football and basketball games together. Standing in the bleachers she’d grab my arm and pound on it with excitement when our Blue Streaks made a great play. I would beg her not to hit me but she couldn’t help it.

On one of the few sleepovers my Mom stepped forward to gracefully introduce her to deodorant. Yeah, we were budding teens.

We progressed through High School but we drifted apart. Why? I don’t have any clear answers for that either.  I guess things just happen in High School.  And once I graduated I joined the Army and left home.

Over the years every once in a while I would drive past the street where she lived and think of her. Whatever happened to Wendy?  Her address was as strange as her name. Its number included  ½.

Today, I made a UPS  delivery in an office. A signature was required.  After viewing the scribble on the signature pad I asked the young lady what her last name was. “Guckamus,” she replied.

“You’re kidding? As like in Wendy Guckamus?”

She smiled. “Yes. She was my aunt.”

I didn’t catch the past tense. I was excited  to find a Guckamus standing in front of me. Of course, I was in a typical UPS hurry.  “Tell her you met Valerie Perez. Wendy was my best friend in High School.”

The young girl looked alarmed. “She passed away about three and a half years ago. She had been ill for a long time.” I watched her drop her guard as I offered my apologizes and condolences. I even said I had been thinking about her just last week. The UPS route went down her street and past her house. She offered the explanation. “She had breast cancer.”

“I’m so sorry.”

BFF, Wendy Guckamus.