Nearly 20 years ago, I lost contact with a good friend. It was abrupt and mysterious. I called her from an airport, en route to visiting her. She said let’s talk tomorrow. That was the last conversation we ever had. Despite my repeated calls for weeks after that, she vanished.

I’ve been thinking about her lately. Cardiogirl recently asked ‘Wouldn’t that be cool if sometime in your life you could ask God three meaningless questions and get the actual answers?’

Not that the disappearance of my friend from my life is inane, but it has always been a burning, somewhat painful, and very tantalizing question — what happened to M? — that I’ve always wanted answered. What was it that caused her to sink so quickly out of sight? Was it a huge or tiny cause? Did it hurt her as it did me?

I had been planning on writing a long blog post about it — about the unanswered mysteries, the dangling threads, the what happeneds? in my life. Plus, it makes for a good story — I got into some gnarly misadventures when I got to her city and didn’t have a place to stay. There’s also many details and insights that I would have included that I’m leaving out here.

Do you know why? Because she friended me on Facebook this morning.

She’s alive, that’s good. She looks happy, married. I’m still a little stunned.

If she’s an intrepid sort, she might be reading this right now.

Hi, M! What the hell happened?

Photo: full moon mystery by alicepopkorn