A friend remembered

Do you have that day--that distinct day in your memory--when everyone was happy together one last time? One last time before something irreversibly changed it all?

That was this day for me last year, the last time I was with my friend Saidie and her family before she was diagnosed just days later with incurable cancer.

It was her birthday and Phil, Moo, and I were honored to be the only non-family guests at the party other than their priest. As with all their family birthdays, we laughed, ate delicious Lebanese food, and were filled with happy, happy, happy.

I do remember Saidie telling her sister, though, about a strange pain she'd been having on the right side of her chest. A detail at the time, insignificant until her diagnosis: stage four bile duct cancer. It had spread to her lungs and liver, and she didn't need to tell us what that meant.

She was my mother's age. 

And she was my mom-away-from-home for the past eight years.

Four and a half months later, she was gone. 

She'd want me to remember the good times. All the times we laughed and drank and were merry. The times we dreamed together and celebrated. The times we smiled knowing smiles across a room or discussed the latest sale she found or boasted about how amazing her daughters were (and are).

But it's hard to think only of that when I see reminders of her everywhere I look. I see the gifts she gave Moo at his first birthday and at Christmas and I wish so badly that she could see him play with them, that she could know him and hear him say her name. I drive by her church or her favorite restaurant or I want to get her opinion on baby room ideas because she always had a good eye for decorating and I can't.

And there's that aching void that never goes away but lessens with time, and it hasn't been enough time yet. It still hurts and I miss her and I wish I could be eating Lebanese food with her today and laughing, laughing, laughing until our faces hurt.

But she's also here with me all the time. In her daughters, who are like sisters to me. In my memories. On my mind and in my heart.

She's here. 

And she's not. 

All at the same time.