After Sally left for her homeland, I tried to keep my eyes open about who to be friends with and find my new best friend.
The rest of grade 4 passed away and when I was in grade 5, I noticed closely the girl named Dolly. I started sharing with her my scrapbooks and drawings. She showed interest. I felt gratified.
Soon in class we sat next to each other and I was happy for myself that this was a great opportunity to improve my English writing skills. Dolly was great at writing English essays and I wanted to know her secrets.
It wasn’t long before Dad got his summer vacation from work and like every year we would travel to our home country, missing classes and coming back to make up for backlogs.
I told Dolly, “I will be away for summer vacation. But in a short month’s time I will be back.” Dolly smiled and said, “Ok. You go ahead and have a good vacation.” Her voice echoed over my ears all the time I was in the vacation.
And to my extreme disappointment when I was back to school from my vacation, nowhere did I find Dolly. Nobody could tell. Because everybody said she was here yesterday as well. I brought little gifts for her which I was unable to present her. I was so gloomy for the rest of the day.
Then next day arrived and while we were all getting ready to stand in assembly to say a short prayer, Dolly hit me on the back with a broad smile.
I was totally dumbfounded. I was sure I would never see her again. Now why did I assume that? When the assembly ritual was over, we talked and went back to class, waiting for the teacher to come in. In that small duration, I took the opportunity to gift her earrings that I had brought from my home country. And she was happy and smiling. The rest of the day was very happy again.
Then the next day disappointment struck me again because Dolly never showed up in school. What was the matter? I missed her all day. Perhaps she would come tomorrow but she never did. So many tomorrows went by and she was never to be seen again. It was then I realized she was gone and I would never see her again.
Later I came to know Dolly’s Dad was diagnosed with Cancer and so they had gone to the city to get better treatment. Then I heard the news that they went back to their home country. After that, I heard that her Dad passed away. To lose a Dad at such a young age must have been very challenging for Dolly and her family.
Now I know she grew from life’s bitter storms until her adulthood. I found her book online that she authored based on her own life, titled, “And then there were three…” meaning herself, her little sister and her Mom, her Dad having passed away. I would have liked to read her life story but unfortunately in our world not everyone has a credit card and neither do I. It would certainly be like a dream come true to have a credit card and buy Dolly’s book and/or other good books and stuff on the web.