I believe some friendships are meant to be. Call it destiny if you’d like. Some friendships last for a season of our life. Others, if you’re lucky, last a lifetime. All of them are important and teach us something about human nature, ourselves, the circle of life. And sometimes those friendships that were meant to last a lifetime are unexpectedly cut short. It’s the loss of a friendship, a person, like that that leaves cracks and holes in you that can never be filled or repaired. That kind of loss can break so deep into your soul that you are never the same afterwards. This is a story about that relationship.
We met in 1998 when I was sent on a contract to her company. I was in the cube next to hers and knew immediately when I met her we would be friends. How can you not be friends with someone who comes to work in pigtails? She was warm and approachable and funny, all qualities that helped an introvert like me feel welcome in a new place. But what really sealed the deal was the day I was having fits with the software I was using and muttering f-bombs, apparently not-so-quietly, as I banged my hand against my desk. We all wore headphones and listened to music as we worked, so I assumed nobody could hear me. I also couldn’t really hear anyone else. Suddenly, Hershey’s dark chocolate minis started landing on my desk. I looked around, trying to figure out what was going on. She peaked her head over the wall and said “Sounds like you need these right now!” We laughed and I asked why I was just now finding out about the secret stash of candy at her desk. That would be the first of four companies we worked at together. See what I mean about destiny?
Our friendship grew over the years. She took great pride in serving me strong drinks and laughing at my hangover the next day at work. I teased her about how accident prone she was. One of our favorite things to laugh about was when my ex-husband’s father spilled a drink on her at our wedding. When we were working and I needed to get her attention, I would throw paperclips at the back of her head because she couldn’t hear me over whatever music was playing on her headphones. After she broke both ankles in a tandem sky-diving accident, I would often pick her up and bring her to work, then drop her off for class while she was still in a wheelchair. She inspired me to go back to school and get my own Masters degree…and warned me which professors to avoid or how to navigate those I couldn’t.
We lost touch for a time when I was with my second ex. That’s what happens when the person you’re in a relationship with is paranoid and insecure. The day I came home to her screaming at me for having email from my ex-husband was the day I realized I should’ve password protected my laptop. But if I did it now, she’d be even more paranoid. So instead I created a secret email account that I only accessed at work and gave it out to family and close friends as the only address to contact me at. She moved around but would drop me a line to check on me. That she stayed in contact meant the world to me. It was like a lifeline, knowing that if I needed a place to land, I had one. When I finally ended things with the second ex, I emailed her and told her I was finally free of that crazy bitch. She responded with “About time. Our rehearsal dinner is on Wednesday. Come have drinks.” So I did. And it was like no time had passed.
Freedom from a toxic and abusive relationship made it possible for us to spend more time together. Not that she wasn’t dealing with her own situation. But that’s what is so special about this kind of friendship. There’s a give and take. When one of you needs to be held up, the other is there. You take turns being the shoulder or the strength. Her ability to read me and my mood was amazing. Our text conversations were priceless, often with us texting each other the same thing at the same time. I still have them. I can’t bring myself to delete that thread, even though it has been silent for almost four years. Our teasing and joking usually ended with us laughing and one of us saying “bite me.” That was our love language. We joked that we shared a brain and between the two of us had one fully functional body. So many moments and memories. Too many to share and bring justice to in a short space.
When she moved back here from the Bay Area, I was really happy. It gave us the chance to spend more time together. I even talked her into coming to work for my team at my current company. We called ourselves Frick and Frack but also referred to ourselves as the Wonder Twins. People at work started calling us Brerin, even outside our team. It caused quite a bit of confusion in meetings for anyone who wasn’t already familiar with the term. The first time we went to the office together, we made the mistake of sharing a hotel room. After the first night, we went to the drug store so I could get earplugs and she could get breathing strips. After that, it was always separate rooms. She teased me about the music I played in the car, so I made sure to always have Air Supply on when I picked her up. We spent the 3-hour drive talking about everything. There was never any judgement between us, so we could tell each other things we couldn’t really tell anybody else.
She got dealt a bad hand when it came to health issues. And not your run of the mill health issues either. Super weird, rare shit. It was exhausting for her. But she could also find the humor in it. During one of our drives, she said “Oh, I don’t plan on seeing 50.” I responded with “That’s not funny. You can’t leave me alone to deal with all this nonsense.” Looking back, I wish I had taken it more seriously. She hid stuff that was going on, or made it seem not as serious as it really was. Though knowing her, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything even if I did know.
2020 really was such a shit year. How were we to know that would be the last year she was alive? It wasn’t even Covid that got her. It was so many other things. So much time stolen because of trying to be responsible and because of some personal dynamics that had nothing to do with either of us. I know anger isn’t a healthy emotion but that doesn’t make it go away. There’s still so much of it inside me. And I feel guilty about being angry at her for leaving. A few months before she died, I went over to her house to take her to the hospital to pick up her husband, who was going through treatment for cancer. When I saw her, my body froze. I almost didn’t recognize her. I knew in that moment that my best friend was dying. I also knew that there was no way to stop it. I’m grateful that her husband got me into the hospital at the end so I could say goodbye, especially when only family was allowed at the time. She was unconscious but I like to believe she could hear me. That image of her in the hospital bed has haunted me ever since.
Her death shattered me in ways I didn’t think was possible. I lost a part of myself that day. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her or miss her. Something happened at work the other day and my first thought was “She would be so proud of me for breaking this!” Then I sobbed for 10 minutes. It has taken almost four years for me to write this. I’ve avoided it because I knew it would bust open the dam of grief that I’ve kept suppressed most of my life. But I knew it needed to be done, for the sake of my own health. So today, on what would’ve been her 51st birthday, I write a tribute to our friendship, knowing it will never fully do it justice.
Bite me.