Where Are They Now, One Family

Before I start writing again about my past, I wanted to update the stars that participated in my young life.  When I pick up my story after moving to Dallas, I will be turning 20 years old and starting out with no friends.  Some of my teenage friends I never saw or heard from again; others are still in my life one way or another.

Shelley was a very close friend for 4 years.  I saw her change from a gawky, immature little girl into a woman.  I believe in my heart that Judy and myself, both being older, played a part in her transformation into a beautiful butterfly.  She was such a naive person, and I used to get the best of her with my weird sense of humor.  Shelley was one of those people that were book smart but had very little common sense.  She just didn't always make the best decisions in the real world.  That may have cost her her life.

You could tell Shelley almost anything, and she would believe you; she was very gullible.  I remember one afternoon when she was sitting in a booth at the drug store where we caught the bus to school with a group of kids from Southview.  I had some fingernail polish remover in an unmarked bottle in my purse.  When I approached the kids, Shelley asked me where I had been.  (I played hooky that day.)  I told her that David and some of his friends had come up, and we went out drinking. (Totally not true.)
She asked why I didn't tell her so she could stay home too, and I said that I hadn't planned on staying home until the last minute.  But I told her not to worry that I had brought her back some gin, and she could mix it with her coke. She liked that idea, so I gave her the polish remover bottle;  Now, any girl or woman knows the smell of polish remover; it has a very distinct odor.  I thought she would smell it, and we would have a laugh at her.  She took the bottle and put it to her mouth, and took a swig.  "Spit it out, Shelley, spit it out; it's nail polish remover!"  SPIT, sputter, and gag.  No, she didn't swallow any, and we all laughed our patooties off at her.  She was embarrassed, rightfully so.

One Saturday, she and I went to a department store in the Marlow Heights shopping center.  She saw a pair of mod sunglasses.  They were checkered black and white frames, very British looking.  She tried them on and wanted them, but they were 10 bucks, a lot of money for shades in 1966.  We walked around and looked at clothes and perfume; we were mostly just killing time.  We were going to walk down to a different store.  As soon as we stepped outside, a little short fat man grabbed both of us by the arm.  He said he was a store detective for the department store, and he needed to "take us upstairs;."  I was looking at him like he was out of his mind.  I asked him what was going on.  By now, we were in his office.  Shelley looked like she was going to throw up.  He had us put our pocketbooks on his desk.  We had identical bags.  We sat them down, and he opened mine, and everything was cool.  He started to open the other one, and Shelley busted out crying.  He opened the bag, and the sunglasses were in it.  He looked at Shelley, who was now hysterical, and asked her what they were doing in her purse.  Oh hell, if her parents found out that she did that, she would be on restriction until she turned 21.  I told him to hold on a minute and asked him why he was looking at her.  He said because she took them.  I told him he was mistaken, that the bag they were in belonged to me.  He said he saw her take them; I told him he was wrong, I took them.  Shelley was looking at me with bugged-out eyes; when he turned away from me to sit at his desk, I put my fingers to my lips and mouthed, "be quiet."  He told us he would have to call her mom and my mom and have them come get us, which brought more hysteria from Shelley.  He called her house first.  No answer; the department store gods were smiling on her that day.  He called my mom, she answered. She had to take a cab to Marlow Heights to pick us up.  She was mad but nowhere near what Shelley's parents would have been.  I took the rap that day, and Shelley's parents never knew that it happened.  That's the kind of friendship that we had.  We shared our clothes, makeup, secrets, and dreams.

When the internet came of age, I started trying to find her, but as anyone knows, it's hard to find a girl or woman because their name changes when they get married.  I looked all over for or her family and could find nothing.  Finally, in about 1998, Classmates had message boards where you could communicate with other school mates and leave messages.  I had left messages about Shelley and Judy, both asking if anyone knew anything.  About a year later, someone posted that they heard that Shelley had died.  Oh, it made me sick.  The person who left it didn't know many details but said they had heard that she died from a brain tumor when she was about 35.  It just ripped my heart out.  Shelley had so many dreams.  She was engaged to one of the guys from Marine Barracks in 1972.  She was going to be a teacher, and she wanted a pink shag carpet in her home.  She wanted kids. That girl was just like the rest of us.  I thought about her parents and how devastated they must have been, I knew that their grief would have been unbearable, and I felt their pain.  I didn't know if she had indeed ever been married or had kids or had become a teacher.  Then I started trying to find her parents or her sister, Karen, to find out more, but I could never locate any of them.  It haunted me for years.  If she had kids, I wanted to find them and tell them about their mom.  I thought about it all the time.

In 2007,  Shelley's sister's husband Bob left me a message on Classmates.  I never dreamed that he and Karen would have married, yes they had been boyfriend and girlfriend in school for several years, but that didn't mean they might get married.  Bob left me a message that Karen had died, and that was all he said no details, and he never answered my questions.  Another sad event, she would have been in her early fifties.

In 2010,  I joined Facebook and picked up my search again for Shelley.  I ran into nothing but dead ends.  Finally, in 2013, I received a message from someone that we had gone to school with.  She said she didn't know all of the details but would tell me what she did know.  Shelley died in 1981.  She had just turned 29.  She was married, with no kids.  She didn't marry the guy from Marine Barracks.  And she didn't die from a brain tumor.  She died of complications from alcohol poisoning.  It was and still is a huge shock.  What kind of person did she marry that would allow her to get in that condition?  I have so much anger for this man that I don't even know.  Why couldn't he save her?
Karma, that's all I can say about it and remain civil.  I looked and looked on different websites for her obituary, which I have never found.  I was finally able to locate her burial location on A Billion Graves.com.  In 2014, when I was visiting my son in DC, I searched her grave for two days before I found it.  I took red and pink carnations to put on her lonely grave, alone, no other family around her, just Shelley.  I cried for a good while.  I asked her how she could do that to herself.  I told her that I was so sorry that I never got to see her again, that I wished that I could have helped her.  I told her of all of us, me, Judy, her sister Karen and her friend Gail that she was the one with the most promise and that I just couldn't understand it.  I guess, in a way, I'm glad that I wasn't around her when it happened.  It would have ripped a hole so deep in me that I would never be able to heal.  I can clearly see how badly her parents must have suffered.

Shelley's entire family is now gone, every one of them.  Her mom and dad are buried together at Quantico National Cemetary; her sister Karen and brother Kieth are buried separately but in the same cemetery in Maryland.  Her baby sister Dee is also buried in the same cemetery as Shelley but alone and separate from Shelley.  I was unable to locate her grave.  I had initially been told they were together, but they are not.  Every one of the kids died young, but Shelley and Dee both died at very young ages.  Dee's death is another heartbreaking situation that I choose not to discuss. I loved them all very much.

That is all of the updating of Where Are They Now that I can do tonight.  I'll just dedicate this to the family and especially Shelley.  To the good times, family, to the good times.