August 14, 1983

 I did not remember August 14, 1983 until a few days ago.  Out of the blue, my cousin in North Dakota sent me the inside of a wooden drawer I wrote all over.  The pencil writing is faded and difficult to read.  I had to employ a magnifying glass and bright light to decipher it.  

There it was.  My own writing.  1983.  I was writing to cousin Karey, who was the sister of the cousin who sent me the wooden drawer, about anything and everything that came to my then teenage mind.  I wrote about missing 4-H camp that year, but did not miss the rats and insects.  I wrote about her boyfriend, my boyfriend, parties we went to and the ones we were planning on going to.  The verbiage was peppered with early 1980's Valley Girl slang.  

What struck me the most was that I wrote how Karey drove like a maniac and called her out on it.  I was then struck by the date I wrote it - August 14, 1983.  It then dawned on my that was the last time I saw Karey alive as she died less than two months later in a single car accident in rural North Dakota.