When her father died, my daughter Meredith and a friend "designed" a sympathy card expressing how they felt. The front would be all white and lovely and traditional. When you opened it, there were only two words: Well, Shit!
My best friend died today. I was born in January of 1943. She was born in July of that same year. For 77 1/2 years, she has been a part of my life. She shared all the heavy stuff: weddings, parental deaths, Rex's death, pregnancies, and the sharing of maternity clothes. We shared lighter, fun stuff: playing together as children, dating together as teens, road trips as adults. We were the kind of friends who could go for months without speaking and then start a conversation with right where we were in the moment.
Several years ago she called and said, "I have a book I want you to read with me." That started us on another part of our journey together. We read theology and Biblical studies. We would talk once a week and sometimes we talked only of the book and sometimes we never mentioned the book because life was too important in the moment. And that got us back in the habit of calling just because we needed to talk.
And then one day she told me she wasn't feeling well. They think it was a viral infection that attacked her heart. I hurt. I will miss her more than I can say. I have written a long document detailing our story and I will read it again and again. It is very hard for me to be in the world without her. Well, Shit!
