In Memorium

Last week I received a shock. My Facebook had a notification that I couldn't get to go away even though I didn't see any notifications. So I did a deep dive and went into the "Other" side of the inbox and found a message from someone I did not know.

He said, this is Kandace Richardson's dad, and Kandace passed away on Sunday morning...

I remember my first reaction being "What? No, that's not right. Kandace is fine, I just saw a post from her a few days ago."

I went to her page and everyone was already commenting how they missed her. It's so surreal, and weird, and doesn't make sense.

Kandace was one of my best friends in elementary school. We were friends in middle school and she went to a different high school, but we kept in touch. As a matter of fact, it was just two months ago she was commenting on pictures and we were saying how we needed to catch up soon. It's been a week since I learned about it, but I still can't believe it.

I'm a little frustrated because I was trying to find a photo album of mine from elementary school that has lots of pictures of us together in it and I wasn't able to. There's zero chance I ever threw that photo album away, but it's probably in the back of the garage. Someday soon I will pull that out and share the photos of me and Kandace from our childhood. I know very vividly there are pictures of us getting ready for the sixth grade dance together in there. Maybe some from my house on the trampoline. In lieu of those, I want to share memories of me and Kandace...

• She had such beautiful handwriting, all the girls in our grade were jealous. It was clean and simple with a curvy edge. I always liked hers the most.
• I would tease her for having the same birthday as Michael Jackson, August 29. Why that was something to make fun of, I'm not sure, but it was funny in elementary school.
• She used to have a good singing voice and she would always sing Usher songs!
• I remember at one of her slumber parties we stayed up and watched Children of the Corn and it terrified me
• She used to wear a lot of shimmer and glitter eyeshadow. But then again, this was 1998 and so did I
• I had been at her house for a few days I think, after some of her birthday celebrations, when we were hanging out in her living room and the news came on that Princess Diana had died in a car accident

Anyway, I still can't believe she's gone. Even though we weren't still close or anything, she was such a big presence in my childhood and I'd never forget her. The worst part was that I didn't see the message from her dad for about 2 weeks late, and so I completely missed her funeral. I have to say goodbye to her myself, Kandace Marie Richardson, who lived on Royce Street in Riverside, California. August 29, 1986 - June 30, 2019.