Friends Lost and Found

I completely remember how my last meeting with my friend Anthea went. It was at her place a bit of a BBQ and some drinks. Nothing out of the norm. Except my life was about to change radically, I was off the next day to start the adventure of a lifetime, a backpacking trip around Europe.

The adventure was only supposed to last a year at the max and Anthea was quite settled with a new boyfriend. I guess we just did not think things in her life would change that much in the year I was gone and anyway I would keep in touch. Goodbyes were said at the end of the night and things were a little sad because we were used to seeing each other frequently and a year seemed like a long time. Little did we know.

As is often the case my adventure did not go exactly according to plan. It certainly was an adventure though and I was soon caught up in the whirlwind of travel and meeting new people and trying to earn enough money to get by. It was a crazy time and though I  thought about my friends back home contacting them was not something that was often possible. It was expensive and each new country bought a new phone system to master. The long and the short of the matter was that it was three years until I returned home.

Most of my friends were easily located. They had stayed in the same houses, had the same phone number or at the very least had an unusual enough surname that they were not difficult to track down. When I could not, at first get in touch with Anthea I was not overly concerned, I knew where her parents lived and they had beeen there twenty years.

After things setteld down a bit I started looking for Anthea in earnest only to discover that her parents had moved on. I then tried rnging every person of her surname in the book. No luck there, despite the fact that it took me many hours. I tried asking friends we had had in common but no-one had anything to report. When I reassessed where I was at it looked pretty bleak. The ‘new’ boyfriend three years ago had been from interstate, if she had married him she probably changed her surname.

Since then I have tried a variety of ways to find my lost friend. Facebook has proven of no use but then Anthea was never big on that kind of social interaction so I guess that is not that suprising. I visited sites where they made big claims but so far nothing has come of them.

I Still Remember You is my way of trying to help myself and those many others out there that have lost someone. Often times people say to me that a friend you don’t contact for years is probably not that good a friend, I disagree. Sometimes, especially when we are young, life sweeps us away but the bottom line is that some friends are meant to be part of your life. I believe Anthea is worth searching for.