With a Heavy Heart

My dear friend Liz passed away on November 20th. I am heartbroken. I went to PA yesterday for her service - it was lovely, by the way! I had a chance to speak and share some things about our many years as friends. Since I was pretty incoherent to my own ears, I thought I'd also share what I said here:

Once upon a time, in my elementary school, a new girl with very curly hair moved in. On her first day, Liz was wearing Daisy Duke shorts and tan pantyhose. She and I started talking and she told me that she had laid out in the sun all summer and that's why her legs were so tan. I informed her that he tan had a run in it. She started laughing; I started laughing and a friendship began. It soon turned into a best friendship and we pretty much lived at each other's houses for years.

In jr high school, we had many classes together, much to our teachers' dismay. We could carry on entire conversations by reading each other's lips. When the English teacher got after us because of it, we told her that we were practicing nonverbal communication. We spent weekends together listening to Loverboy, Joan Jett, and Meatloaf. We planned to write a book about our lives because we found ourselves so interesting, we figured other people would want to read about us. We snacked on Skor bars and Dr. Pepper sodas. In sr high, it was harder to spend much time together; I took business classes and Liz took academic classes. We became pretty good at tossing notes to each other in the halls during class changes.

By our senior year, we were still friends, but our lives were on different paths. We tried to get together often after graduation, but one thing led to another and we lost contact. I signed up for classmates.com and hoped that eventually Liz would sign up too. She finally did and I paid the fee so that I could message her. It was so much fun being in contact again. Because Liz didn't have a computer at home yet, we once again wrote notes to each other.

And now it seems that our paths are different once again. The actor Jack Lemmon said that Death ends a life, not a relationship. The girl scouts sing a song that says "make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold." A gold friendship lasts forever.

So. my old, gold friend, I will think of you always and rejoice that one day we will meet again.