Celebration of a Friendship

I lost a dear friend to cancer this week.  Cancer sucks!  I know I’m not the first to say that, and unfortunately, I won’t be the last.  She was too young and it is too sad, but she didn’t want to be remembered with a lot of tears and carrying on.  She is however, so worthy a tribute, I have to do it and I’ll try to keep it fun, the way she liked things to be.

She was a friend I didn’t know I needed when I met her at Potawatomie Campground in 2012. Actually, I made more of a connection with her yellow lab, Pup, than I did with her, but that’s the way it is with introverts like the two of us – it takes us a while to warm up. So when our camping group met for dinner in the off season, and MOH (my other half) and I ended up sitting next to her and HOH (her other half), we fought through some awkward silence and the usual getting to know you conversation. At the end of the night, our group shared the usual calls of ‘goodbye’, ‘see you later’, and ‘we’ll talk soon’. Kim said, “Bye. Glad you got to see me.” It was unexpected, cracked me up, and sealed the deal. We were friends.

As friendships go, ours wasn’t a particularly long one.  I have friends I met in elementary school fif- , well quite a while ago.  I know she had lifelong school friends as well.  But after our initial awkwardness, we were a great match.  We could talk several days in a row and not run out of things to say, or not speak for a month or more and just pick up where we left off.  We also shared a need to sometimes slip away from social situations, even ones involving friends and loved ones.

We shared Bob Evans breakfasts and book discussions.  We enjoyed sleeping in while our other halves hung out at morning campfires.  I never knew either of my grandmothers and I loved hearing the stories and memories about her grandma.  We shared an affinity for Fireball, both the drink and the song by Pitbull.  We messaged each other on Sunday nights and were huge Walking Dead fans, until we weren’t.  That flippin’ Neegan ruined all the fun.  What a butt-head!

We both love a carry-out pizza from Waid’s in Tekonsha, although our topping preferences differed greatly.  She wasn’t a coffee drinker, but I forgave her.  To my horror she put pickles in her macaroni salad.  I tried to look past that as I don’t like macaroni salad anyway and MOH really enjoyed it.  She would make him his own container.  We never did play Yahtzee together, but she would talk about family tournaments and I imagined her as a ruthless fiend.

Losing a loved one in the days of social media is both heartbreaking and heartwarming.  I love all the things that we have shared on Facebook and I look forward to the things that will pop up as memories in my feed.  Her heart melted when she saw babies and I would tag her when I came across cute baby videos. It makes me happy to go to Pinterest and be able to see her pins.  When I look at her profile on Goodreads, I want to read all the books she recommended and finish the list of books she wanted to read.  And why not?  There are only 176 books on her Want to Read list.

She was an oh-so-fabulous combination of salty and sweet, respectful and irreverent, as evidenced by the images in this post that I got from pins on her Pinterest page.  I loved her much.  Fly high my friend.  I’m glad I got to see you.