I lost my BFF Patty at 7 a.m. Thursday, March 6. I am heartbroken.

We met in 1950 when I moved to Kansas when I was 12. We became inseparable from the 8th grade through high school. We both married at 17 and our lives went separate directions. We reconnected at our 50th high school reunion in 2006.

After that, we emailed twice a day until she died from a bad fall that gave her a brain bleed too deep to be operable. She never gained consciousness after the fall.

Let me tell you about our early adventures from age 12 to 17.

In our small Kansas Town, there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment except the movie theater where Patty worked in the ticket office. She never let me in free.

In such a small school, we had all of our classes together. In Home-ec it was fun to give our efforts at cooking to the boys waiting outside the classroom door. We went to football and basketball games with the Pep Club.

Usually on the schoolers, singing “Twenty-nine bottles of beer on the wall” all the way to Leavenworth and McCloud and lots of little towns in eastern Kansas around our home town of Tonganoxie.

Go ahead and laugh at the name, but it was named after a proud Native American chief.

There was a mound on the north side of town that was supposed to be his grave. Many a night we spent on those country roads, admittedly not always looking for that mound.

Thus was the life in small town Kansas that I shared with my BFF Patty.

Once, in the eigth grade, our teacher Mrs. Garrison embarrassed Patty by telling the class: Patricia sat on a tack, Patricia Rose.

That was her good Irish name. I could share so many stories if I had time.

After our reunion in 2006, we emailed twice a day, sharing what we did that day and how much housework we ignored. She had moved to Missouri on a farm. Her husband had died right before our high school reunion, so I think our emails kept her from being lonely as she lived in the “boonies.”

At my encouragement, she started going to the Senior Center in her tiny Missouri town and joined a book club. Speaking of books, she started sending me boxes of books every week or so and introduced me to so many wonderful authors. I had pretty much read British mysteries but, thanks to her, I discovered so many more wonderful writers.

Now, I still have two boxes of books to return to her. I feel so sad when I look at those boxes as they remind me of my wonderful friend and BFF.

Pat and I both knew we were getting old. She was 6 days younger than me at 86. We prided ourselves for being so healthy and active for our age.

I would like to say to all RVT readers: please be careful when you walk. What happened to Pat, to go from being healthy, to having a fall take her life should be a gentle warning to all of us.

Patricia Ireland lives in Medford.

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