The Last Witness
When Your History Becomes Your Heritage
A few days ago, a random thought crossed my mind, the kind that usually leads to a pleasant trip down memory lane. I realized I hadn’t heard from my friend Charlene in a while. We had been friends since the third grade, one of three girls who I could genuinely call my friends in high school. We kept in touch over the decades, exchanging messages a few times a year.
I pulled up her social media to see what she was up to, only to collide head-first with a digital wall of mourning. Charlene had died some time ago.
Stunned, sitting in the quiet of my office, a cold wave of panic washed over me. I immediately looked up Sandy, the second member of my friend short list. She had also died some time back. I searched for Paula, the final piece of my teenage puzzle. Also dead. In the span of twenty minutes, the entire landscape of my youth was wiped clean. None of them were left.
Seeking some kind of comfort, I looked up Susie. Susie was an older neighborhood girl who used to let me hang around her when I was just a kid looking for a role model. Her Facebook profile exists, but it is completely hollow—no photos, no posts, just an empty digital shell. I spent hours researching her family members, her late husband, her children. There is literally no mention of her existence anywhere online. It is as if the internet simply swallowed her whole.
The Haunted Arithmetic of Survival
The silence that followed that search was deafening. Neither my mother nor my father lived to be as old as I am right now, so I am already operating in uncharted territory. But realizing that the witnesses to my own beginning have exited the stage left me feeling entirely empty. Haunted.
If we weren’t living in the digital age, I would never have known. I would have gone on with my week, assuming my friends were out there somewhere in the world, living their lives, breathing the same air, and holding our shared memories in their hearts. The internet gave me the truth, but it also delivered a sudden, crushing isolation.
It is a strange kind of vertigo to realize you are the last woman standing in a room that used to be full of laughter, secrets, and terrible high school haircuts. When the people who knew you before you knew yourself disappear, you start to wonder if your own past is just a story you made up.
Reclaiming the Hearth
For twenty-four hours, I sat with that hollow feeling. But a goddess doesn’t sit in an empty temple and let the fires go out just because she is the only one left to tend them.
We have to shift the narrative from nearing extinction to ambassadorship. I am not just a survivor left behind in a ghost town; I am the chosen custodian of that entire era. If I don’t remember the exact cadence of Charlene’s laugh, the specific brand of mischief Sandy preferred, or the way the leather in Susie’s Nova smelled on a hot July evening, then those things truly cease to exist.
Outliving your peers doesn’t mean you are ancient. It means you have been promoted to matriarch. It means your work here is far from finished.
Living on Borrowed Credit
The weight of being the one who remains is heavy, but it is also a profound honor. We owe something to the ones who checked out early. We owe it to them to live with absolute, unapologetic relish.
We cannot afford to waste time hiding our larger-than-life bodies, shrinking into the background, or waiting for a “perfect time” to be happy. Our friends didn’t get the credit of these extra years. We are holding the wallet now, and it is an insult to their memory to spend it frugally.
Eat the food. Wear the ridiculously bright colors. Speak the terrifying truths. Occupy your space in this world with pride and sovereignty. You aren’t walking through this life alone; you are carrying a whole crowd of girls inside you now. Keep the lights on in the temple. You are the last witness, and you have a magnificent story to tell.