Goodbye Dear Friend

My phone registered a call the other day but there was no message. It was a Michigan number but not one that was already on my phone so I shrugged it off as a miss dial. A few hours later the same number called and I picked up. The voice on the line informed me that a dear friend had died.

When I was in High School I befriended a new student. We sat together during lunch, I tried to include her in any activities I was involved in...and then one morning she didn't come to school. A schoolmate would later come up to me at my locker and ask if I'd heard that the new girl had gotten into a car accident and had died.

In both instances my brain refused to hear the news. Both times I said that I didn't understand. It just couldn't be. The giver of this news was surely wrong. In the case of the new girl I simply refused to believe it until it was announced over the loud speaker.

The other day, something told me that the news was true. My friend hadn't been happy for a while, he had gone through some tough times. He wasn't always so healthy and he didn't make many moves to fix this. But I couldn't believe it until I had confirmation...the confirmation came when I called the funeral home.

John Campbell was such a fun friend once upon a time. He ran sound for the church we went to and I sang songs so we had to work together pretty often. We went to the same youth group activities and the same school. He drove me to school along with my neighbor Becky. His big truck was always so cold on those winter mornings. He was older than me and I had a crush on him for years. We would go back and forth between liking each other and not...back and forth, back and forth. I had so many pictures of the two of us but as many silly teenage girls will do, I threw them all away vowing I'd never like him again...and now I have only my memory of him. We eventually grew apart but would somehow get back in contact every once in a while.
His calls came randomly, a few times before I married Trey, a few times after. Then there were no calls for a while. And then they came more frequently. They were always a surprise and we'd talk about the past and how much fun we had once upon a time.
I thought about him over Christmas because we had that party with friends. A part of me thought that maybe he'd show...but he didn't. He was in Tennessee with his folks. Which is where he died. Went to bed one night and just never woke up.
My heart is so sad over this death. I will never get another call from him, never another surprise email. And I'm sad, so very sad.
I've sent notes to his parents and flowers to the funeral home but feel like there should be something else...something that I should do to commemorate the life of my friend John Campbell...who loved Elvis and made me smile.

John's Obituary