To My Best Friend Heather

My fondest memories of childhood, the things that make me smile and laugh the most, are the times that I spent with my best friend Heather. I am blessed to have someone in my life who has been there forever, who knows everything about me and who I can tell anything to. I don’t think most people have a friendship like this one and I consider myself really lucky. Heather and I met when we were three and we’ve been friends ever since. She was the one person when I was growing up that I could have over to the house without worrying that she would find out what was really going on there. She may have been the only person that I ever had over to the house. She spent quite a bit of time there actually and although I don’t remember talking much as kids about what was going on when no one was looking, I think it was because we didn’t have to.

We haven’t lived in the same city since we were seven, so I find it extraordinary that we have remained friends over all these years. Our parents drove us back and forth in the summers and for school holidays. Before she moved, I remember riding around the block on my big wheel to get to her house, and my dad lifting her over the back fence in the raspberry patch so she could get home. We spent weeks at each other’s houses and I would cry and cry when I had to go home. No matter what has happened in our lives, what we have been doing, where we’ve been living, she has been a constant in my life. Being diagnosed with breast cancer sort of prompted me to evaluate my life in a way that I think most people only do when they are older. What do I regret, what do I love, what am I grateful for, what do I wish for, what would I change, how can I live differently? It has made me realize the value of certain people in my life and how important it is to share with these people what they mean to you. I have an appreciation, like only some people can have, of just exactly how everything can change in a split second.

One of my favorite things to do with Heather over the years has been to sit around and talk about the silly things we did when we were kids. We laugh and laugh. To other people these stories probably aren’t all that funny, but they make me laugh, they make me cry, and they are my favorite memories of my childhood.

There are so many stories, 26 years worth. There was the time we crushed a box of cheerios on her parent’s kitchen floor by stomping on them. The time we washed rocks from the driveway and tried to sell them. The time we locked my brother in the corner – two doors came together when they were both open and we put my brother in there and tied the doorknobs together. Actually – in reality, my brother must have gone in willingly. There was the time we made a refrigerator in her bedroom out of a cardboard box and a fan and kept pickles in it. And the time we locked our selves in my parent’s bathroom to drink pickle juice and called it “dill wine” and then hid the jar in the closet when my mom knocked on the door. We used to sled down the stairs at my parent's house in sleeping bags.

We had this thing we called the “fund” and Heather used to lug it to my house every time she came. Every time we saw each other, we counted the fund and added to it. It consisted entirely of change and at its peak I think we had about $125. Every time we saw each other we would take some money out of the fund and go to the corner store and buy tons of candy – jolly ranchers when they used to come in the long flat sticks. We used to buy all the Garfield comic books and read them together. And for some reason, we took a lot of walks. We would get together and walk for what seemed like hours, talking about everything. There was the time we went to the Lilith Fair concert, got soaked, I lost my shoes, we ran to the car - were covered in mud by the time we got there, we stripped down to almost nothing because we had driven her mom's brand new car, got stuck in accident traffic on the way home and went through the Taco Bell drive through at 3 a.m. in our underwear. Even now, things happen that make me laugh when I think about them. Recently when Heather visited me – we sat at my dining room table for what I think was a total of about 9 hours doing a jig saw puzzle, saying almost nothing to each other the entire time. I think she is the only person I could do this with.

Anyway, in twenty-six years, Heather and I have only gotten in to one fight that I can think of. We must have been 7 because it was before she moved away. We got into a fight over the stuffed Garfield animals we were playing with – I wanted hers because hers could wear underwear.

Much of my life I have felt like no one knows me, no one knows the real me, with the exception of Heather. She has been there through everything, the good and the bad, and everything in between. I would be lost without you.