Best Friends

What does the title "best friend" mean to you?

The three amigas - 1995

 For me it means a variety of people in a variety of ways. I am lucky enough to have multiple best friends, but when I dig down deep there are only a handful of people in my life who I would qualify as a true, lifelong, "best friend". The person that I lost this week was very truly one of my best friends. I met her in the 7th grade. We were loners, nerds and geeks together. She went to a different school in the 8th grade, where she met another of my best friends. In the ninth grade she went to a different high school than I did, but we kept in touch. In the 10th grade she came to my high school. We had fun and we were miserable together, me and her and the third of our trio. And we were, the three of us, in our own little world. We survived high school together, we worked, we went to college, all at different times. And we grew together, as only those friends who meet and bond in adolescence do. We were all bridesmaids in each others weddings. We laughed together and we cried together. We always thought that we would grow old together. Marriage, children, work. These are the adult things that make the friendship of youth so difficult to maintain.

The three of us New Years Eve 1996

Divorce, crisis and death. These are the things that best friends survive together. In the worst and most painful moments of life knowing that someone out there will always have your back, no matter what, is a source of comfort. When I heard the news about her death I had a brief mental image of my life as a wheel, with my connections to others as spokes in that wheel, and the wheel that I pictured was now missing another spoke, throwing it off balance. And that is how I feel. I am off balance.

Two missing spokes in my wheel. Jennifer and my Dad at my wedding

As I was making the phone calls that were horrible yet inevitable I kept thinking that I should call my Dad. My Dad should know that the friend of mine that he loved the most, the one he thought of as another daughter, had died.  But my Dad has been dead for more than two years now. And in my mental wheel their spokes were next to each other and now the hole is that much bigger. And as a result I am that much more off balance.

The three of us at my wedding - 2004

There are so many stories that I tell that involve her; My first attempt to drive a stick shift, push starting that crappy VW Rabbit down Speedway, and my first time in Las Vegas.  One of my favorites is about the time we drove out to the bladed desert that would soon become new housing on the west side of town.  I'm not sure now why we left the house we shared to make that trip but I do know we were in our pajamas.  I remember sitting on top of that crappy little blue car, looking at the stars and talking about who knows what when we heard a noise.  Somehow we became convinced that the noise had come from a pack of javelinas. We were too scared to stay where we were so we got into the car, through the windows because we were afraid of setting foot on the ground. We took off and began driving back towards home when we hit a median.  It was her fault, I don't remember if she was playing with the heater or the radio but the car swerved and boom.  Neither of us were hurt but the car had a flat tire.  No worries she had a spare, but shit the jack was at home for some unknown reason.  So there we were in our pjs, pre-cell phone era stuck with a flat tire.  It was the middle of the night and I had the bright idea to just walk to my moms house which was maybe a mile or so away. We start walking down 22nd in our nightgowns and had gone maybe 100 yards when a big guy in a little sports car offered us a ride.  We accepted, and yes in hindsight that was pretty dumb of us, but it worked out fine and he dropped us off at my moms house.  I didn't have my keys with me, they were at home with the jack, so I went through the backyard to the sliding glass door leading to my moms bedroom and went in saying out loud "don't shoot, I just need to borrow your truck for a while".  We drove the truck home, put on real clothes, grabbed the jack and a roommate and drove back to the car. It was still sitting there somewhat blocking the entrance to a small dirt road. As we set to work changing the tire a cast of bizarre characters appeared, seemingly out of nowhere,  wanting to drive down the dirt road we were blocking.  At this point it was probably 2 in the morning and we couldn't figure out why all these people wanted to drive down that small dirt road.  We never did figure that part out and it later just became another addition to the story of one of the weirdest and most surreal nights I've ever had.

The three of us in Vegas - 2000

The thing about this story is that I know she had a different version of the same events.  But I can't remember now how our versions differed and I can't call her and ask her.  More than 25 years worth of stories, ups and downs, successes and failures, trials and tribulations are now at an end.  The knowledge that we will never share another experience or create another story together is unreal.  I cannot fathom how my life will be without her in it. All I know for sure is that I will miss her for the rest of my life and she took a piece of my heart with her.

Our last Vegas trip together - 2015

Jennifer Lopez 1978-2017