It wasn’t real until we got to the chapel, and saw her picture on the easel outside. She’d grown to be an even more beautiful woman than she’d been a teenage girl.

It was a gusty, rainy day in the South Bay. The chapel was filled to overflowing, more crowded than Midnight Mass. One by one we found each other—happy to see each other, teary at why.

I sat with two of her boyfriends, the one she went out with as a freshman and the one she broke up with him for.

She broke up with me on the snow trip, he reminded me. On the bus, on the way there.  I remember! I said, as it came rushing back. She changed seats, he said, and it was over. We looked at each other and laughed. Oh how she would have loved this, seeing us all together.

Her son’s boy scout troop filed in, forming an honor guard.

We had been in Girl Scouts together since we were 8. Our troop was all the same age. And though we got along like sisters, there was one clear line between us: those who slept in tents when we went camping, and those who slept outside.

Lynn was always a tent girl, while I loved to sleep under the sky. On either side of the great divide, we all stayed up long past our leaders’ warning, giggling and whispering on the bigger topics until one by one, we dropped off.

Even then she was the prettiest girl in the class, which made her the target of speculation and envy. While she enjoyed the attention she got from the boys, she always wore it lightly. It never really seemed to sink in, didn’t touch the deepest layers.

Three years later, I see her death like a seismic event that jolted my life into a different track, like a river reclaiming its course across the plain.

The rules were suddenly clear: stop putting the important things off. Live each day awake, to the gifts of love, and time.

The next year, I left the software company where I’d been for 14 years. Everyone told me I was brave but it felt like letting go, following the deeper pull of my life, downstream.

I wrote to an old friend and apologized for my part in a chasm between us. You took someone I loved from me, I told God, now give me someone back, and he did.

And after years of talking about it, we organized a Girl Scout reunion.

 We held it at our leader’s house, on the same street where Lynn grew up. The last time we had seen each other we were barely in our teens. Now we were dentists and nurses and mothers and grandmothers and gardeners and teachers and technicians. And somehow, we had all turned 50. 

Our leader had kept a scrapbook. We pored over it like archaeologists, reconstructing our young lives. We filled in each other’s memories, and were surprised at what we’d forgotten completely.

Here was a note from the a batallion in Vietnam, thanking us for the goodie boxes we’d sent. Here we were in the local paper, planting trees for Arbor Day. And here were pictures and patches from more campouts than we could name.

Learning to fence at Lazy J. A watermelon-eating contest at Newport Dunes. In a circle for Scout’s Own at Lake Cachuma. The figurines we carved out of Ivory soap at Lake Casitas. The painted rocks we made to give away but none of the other troops wanted them. (Hmph!) Our last trip together to the cabin in Idylwild. A Halloween party.

We drove to the slopes overlooking the sea where two of our friends and three of our grandmothers are buried. We followed the map, and found each of their graves.

We hadn’t planned it out, but we knew just what to do. We stood in a circle, and sang.

We even remembered when to come in on the rounds—the high parts, and harmonies.