I knew this would be a tough prompt when I added it, but what I didn't realize was the timing of it. Today is the day after Easter Sunday (in case you were unaware, you're welcome) and one of my strongest memories of this person happened at an egg hunt just before the holiday. But let me set the scene a bit first.
I very vaguely remember when my family moved to the mountains just north of Forth Collins. Before moving to Nebraska, that's where all my childhood memories come from. We lived a solid 45 minutes from town, which might as well have been 2,000 miles honestly. We didn't leave the confines of Livermore all that often, but I liked it that way. For some crazy reason my mom chose to homeschool four kids all at the same time. I know she had really good reasons, but I'm sure there were plenty of days when she couldn't remember them so clearly. There were quite a few other kids around us who were homeschooled and apparently the mom's all decided to form a group around that. We were the Bear Paw Mountain Homeschoolers. We had shirts made, so it was about it legit as it gets.
From what I understand part of the reason to form the group was to facilitate activities that students in public school took part in. I remember an art teacher was brought in once and we all made homemade paper. It was super cool, and messy. We would also do our Iowa Test of Basic Skills testing with our homeschool group. It was a good way to socialize and make friends despite being schooled at home. Livermore was a small community and so was our homeschool group. There was only one other student my age. His name was Chad and he was just a year older than me. We became fast friends even though we didn't actually spend that much time together. He was my first best friend.
My favorite memory of Chad was at an Easter egg hunt. It was quit the competition and there were prizes for the kids who collected the most eggs. As the unathletic one of the group, I somehow collected the fewest number of eggs. Naturally, Chad found the most. One of his prizes was a stuffed bunny. I have no idea if I was visibly upset about my poor egg hunting skills or how everything played out, but Chad gave me that bunny. It was a small gesture in retrospect but it's stuck with me for life. That bunny's gone everywhere with me, to college, jobs in various states and now to Vance AFB. He's always sitting out somewhere in my room where I can see him. Surprisingly I never gave him a name, which is odd for me considering my strong affinity for stuffed animals.
A few months after my family moved to Nebraska in April 2003, Chad and his family moved to North Carolina so his dad could start a church. I don't even remember the last time I saw Chad in person, but we kept in touch via our newly acquired emails. I was in 7th grade when he passed away and I found out months after the fact. I thought it was odd that he wasn't returning my emails, it just wasn't like him. At Christmas my mom found out he had passed away from his family's card. I had experienced loss before that, but it was a new kind. I had never lost someone my own age. The hurt was very different. The older I got the more I came to realize the hurt came from a life being cut far too short.
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