I just found out my childhood best friend had passed away a month ago and no one told me.

When we were kids, he and I would often play with my beanie babies, making very elaborate stories. Apparently, one was so dark that he recalled it years later. Allegedly, the story was that the children in our beanie baby village were disappearing and being murdered and we had to figure out who was doing it, lol. He always played Howl the wolf while I picked Slick the fox.

He loved Howl so much that, when I found one at a garage sale as a kid, I begged my mom to buy it for him so we could be twins. He had kept it all these years along with a letter I gave him when I moved away.

Both my childhood friends are now gone. Most people don't experience this until they're elderly and I wish I was a part of that statistic more than anything.