How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
A.A. Milne
I usually love celebrating anniversaries – weddings, first dates, the day we moved into our house. But today is an anniversary that I wish didn’t exist.
Today marks one year since I lost my oldest and dearest friend. She lost her battle with cancer one year ago today and I miss her every single day. 365 days of missing her, of wishing I could hear her voice, her quirky sayings, her quick wit and her sharp tongue. Wishing I could see her freckles and the crinkle on her nose when she’d laugh out loud. Wishing I could borrow one of her amazing recipes or sit around and play cards together while having either a “cuppa” or a beer.
It’s not often that we are fortunate enough to have a friend who sees us through different stages of our lives. Tara and I shared almost 30 years of friendship – from the teenage years where we thought we knew everything, through university where we remained friends but also became sisters when we joined the same sorority and we booked our Monday classes around Sunday nights at our favourite bar and favourite local band. After university, we both started our careers at the same time and supported each other through all that came with needing to be an adult even though we still felt like teenagers at heart.
But as in many friendships, we had what we like to refer to as a bit of a hiatus. Like Ross and Rachel, we were on a break. Prior to that break, we often joked about how we felt like we were living parallel lives. Our birthdays were 3 days apart. Our dads both worked shift work in factories. Our brothers were the same age and would even hang out together on occasion, usually when we forced them to because we were bossy big sisters like that. Our moms even ended up working together.
And it was that connection between our moms that brought Tara and I back together. Both of our moms got tired of us asking about the other one so they basically told us to get our shit together and talk things out. So that’s what we did, in the best way we knew how. As Tara would say, we set the world to rights. Over beers. On the patio at one of our favourite local watering holes and former haunts from back in the day.
And from that day on, there was never another bad word between us. She was there when I said my “I do’s” and when I welcomed my boys into the world. And we were there for each other when things came full circle and my kids and her step-kiddos all became teenagers at the same time. We’d share our challenges and it would inevitably lead to a trip down memory lane – “remember when we did this” or “remember when we went there” – and it always made everything seem ok. We made it through those tough teenage times together and so our kids will do the same.
But like anyone who knew Tara, really knew her, I feel ripped off. Ripped off from having more time with someone who I loved spending it with. Even though we had replaced nights out with nights in and Saturday afternoon hangouts and traded our Strongbows and Coors Lights for tea and playing Five Crown and Scattergories, particularly after she got sick, she was still one of my favourites to be around. I feel ripped off to see how our parallel lives would have continued.
I wanted to be there on her wedding day, just as she was there on mine. I wanted to parent our way through the teenage years together and validate to each other that we are so much cooler than our kids give us credit for. And maybe one day, we’d even become grannies at the same time and bring our grandbabies to Mason Lake in the summers.
Every once in a while, I will go through my phone and watch some of the videos I have of her so I can relive some of my favourite memories and so I don’t forget what her voice sounds like. And I can’t watch Top Gun, hear George Michael or make her homemade mac and cheese without feeling both comforted and overwhelmed by sadness all at the same time.
If there are any lessons we can take from a life cut far too short, it’s to leave nothing left unsaid. Because Tara never did. Good, bad or ugly, she was saying it. And for so many of us who knew her best, it was the good that stuck out most. Anytime we’d visit in person, she’d leave you with a hug and a kiss and tell you she loved you. And she had a special way of saying it to each person. For me it was “I love the bones of ya.” And every time we’d talk on the phone, she’d end the conversation the same way. She’d say “OK, Chicken. I’m gonna love ya and leave ya.”
Well, my friend, I will always love you. I promise to keep telling stories, playing our favourite songs and games and raising a Strongbow in your honour. That’s how I will keep your beautiful memory alive and you’ll never truly leave us.
My feisty Tara, my dearest friend, my loyal confidant, my fierce supporter: thank you for being such an important part of my yesterdays, a bright spot in my every day and for the amazing memories I will carry with me for all of my tomorrows. Love the bones of ya, my sweet friend. Forever and always.
