Precious Moments and My Best Friend...

Nothing prepares you for the exit of a dear friend on this earth. Whether you have had a year of realization that their time is near or if it is sudden and unexpected. Nothing can possibly compare. Nothing can make you ready for the day you wake up and realize you must go on living with only a memory. You can't pick up the phone and call, you can't laugh over a glass of wine, you can't share silly jokes. You close your eyes that night and wake up the next day feeling empty and somehow, some way... you must find strength inside to get out of bed and move on. Recently, a close friend of mine has been reflecting about his best friend who was taken suddenly and too early. In many moments, I wanted to hug him and be there to listen. This person who was in his life, makes up a part of who he is today, a part of him I wanted to embrace and adore. I realized though, it is hard to open up about someone you love dearly who is no longer here. His memory brings back my memories of my best friend who passed. I understand if he can't talk about it because I can't talk about my friend either without feeling choked up. I know I'd only get part of a sentence out before I stumbled and started crying without ever finishing what I had to say. There is a picture of her and I on my window ledge. It was the last picture taken of her before she died. She fought me that day about me taking a picture of her. She thought she looked horrible. I thought she looked beautiful and simply told her to smile. She made me a promise when she left that if there was a heaven and it was everything she thought it would be, she would give me a sign that I would not miss. I wonder if she is happy and in the place she wanted to be. There has been no unmistakable sign. I knew her most of my life through trials and tribulations most could not be lifted from but she was my right wing and also my best friend even though she was in her late 60's and I in my early 20's. Many sleepovers, bottles of wine, cigarettes, and long talks up till 3 in the morning. We made blankets together and played countless games of gin rummy. She was everything to me. In my late teens, we had a falling out but it only brought us closer because when we reconciled our differences, it was that moment she became my best friend instead of an adult authority figure in my life. My best friend died when I was 32 years old. My memories of her feels like yesterday. Easily, I forget it was four years ago because time has ceased to exist from the day she left to now. How does one cope with death? I'll never know because honestly, I do not know how to myself. I hold her memory in my heart and remain silent cherishing every moment of what I know, feel, and love about who she was. She is a part of who I am today. There isn't a day that I live where something of what she taught me doesn't exist. Precious moments I will forever cherish as long as I live.