This morning I woke up to some heart-breaking news. No, actually, it wasn’t just heart-breaking, it shattered a part of my soul. One of my closest dearest friends Linda had passed away. I cried. Holy shit did I cry. I tried to cry quietly, but I still woke up my son. He looked at me and said “what’s a matter, mommy?” Somehow telling him that Titi Linda died made it worse. I spent most of the morning wandering the house a bit lost; going back and forth between tears and anger, wanting to open the front door and scream it out to wanting to throw myself on the floor. I just couldn’t fathom that she was gone. Life went from saying to each other “hey, remember the time that ___” to now being me and my memories of her.
I haven’t been able to come up with the words to express just what our friendship meant to me. How do you condense 33 years of friendship down to a few lines? When speaking to another friend of mine this evening and she said “I know you well enough to know that when time is right, your words will flow perfect though through your heart”. 16.5 hours and a mondo emotional hangover later, I still can’t find the words. I don’t think I ever will.
I’ll never forget when I first met Linda back in 1983. We were in Mr. Warbrick’s class. I was staring at her hair because I really liked it (it was darker and longer than mine). She thought I was staring at her to be mean so she gave me stank-eye. The years never diminished her sass; it was one of many things I’ve always loved about her and something I’ll now forever miss.
We shared so many things over the years. All the crazy high school shit – itty bitty titty committee, sharing beers and eyeliner, and about how we swept the BOCES open house Cosmo competition taking 2nd & 3rd place (“That right, bitches! MW! MW!”). Then not being as close after high school when life took us in different directions and we only saw each other randomly around FunRoe. Then it coming back around again (“You live in Brooklyn? Me too! Oh fuck, momma, we’re only 2 stops away from each other?!”).
We shared so many highs and so many lows; amazingly beautiful times and some pretty dark dark times. We’d gone from cheap beers to good wines, horrible boyfriends to great husbands, from being kids to having kids. We went from “when I grow up …” to “when we’re old and grey ….(then laugh about how I’ve had white hair since we were teens)”.
But now we won’t get to do all those things we said we were going to do when we were old ladies. There won’t be any more binge eating empanadas while polishing off bottles (and bottles) of wine and playing with hair dye. There won’t be any more texts or phone calls to share news (both good and bad) or just to say hi. There won’t be any more shared laughter but there will be a lot more tears.
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