People always give me ideas for potential columns. One I discounted right away. The more I thought about it, though, the more it appealed to me. The Death of a Friendship. Haven't we all experienced that? Like the Very Best Friend from grade school I couldn't live without for even one day.
     We grew up less then a block away from each other and met on the school bus the first day of kindergarten. Afternoon kindergarten. We went to summer camp together and my mother always said my Very Best Friend was her extra child. Wherever I went, so went my VBF.
     Saturdays we walked a mile to church to attend Mass because we knew it would make us better children. And I suspect we hoped the nuns might see us there and hold us in high regard. Each week our parents gave us nickels so we could stop at the Paradise Bakery for a glazed doughnut to eat on the way home.
     We were in Scouts together. She is the friend who missed out on the Brownie field trip because I was throwing up in the girls' lavatory and she didn't want me to be alone.
     Alas, the friendship did not survive our separation the first day of seventh grade. That was the day she went off to the posh private school her older sisters had attended. Her new world left no room for me.
     I tried to hang on, telephoning to see if she wanted to walk to the drug store for a cherry Coke or a piece of homemade fudge, our all-time favorites, but she spoke of a school dance and I knew she had outgrown me.
     Friendships end for all sorts of reasons. But like expired canned goods, it's hard to toss them out. There's something disheartening about the thought of a four dollar jar of artichoke hearts in the trash, isn't there? You've invested so much, it's hard to throw the darn thing away. Even though you know one taste might poison you.
     Sometimes you let a friend get so close they lose sight of where they end and you begin. Like a neighbor's lovely oak tree that has dropped leaves and acorns on your lawn for more years than you can remember. You never see it coming: One day the roots of that tree begin to knarl up your turf, making a mess of things. By the time the tree is cut down and hauled away, you feel a sense of relief; you had grown tired of cleaning up after it every fall. It had attracted pesky squirrels you once thought cute, but now…now you like the look of the new fence you've put up to establish your property's boundary once and for all.
     A friend of mine thinks people come and go from our lives for a reason, put there because we need each other at the time. Ebb and flow, she says. Like artichokes. For awhile I couldn't live without them. I put them on everything—salad, pizza, veggie burgers—until the day I allowed the jar to expire. I'd outgrown my taste for them and was ready to move on. To my new Very Best Friend, sun-dried tomatoes.