Cheers Darling.

Each year this day rolls around and fills me with more love and sadness than the year before. More so than the day you left us.

It's your birthday...we should be celebrating. We should have turned 21 together. We should have turned 30 together. We should be turning 34 together this year. 11 days was all that separated us...and now it is so much more than that. What it is I don't know. Is it the space/time continuum, is it heaven, is it merely the loss of a physical being. I don't know.

I won't pretend to wax philosophical about life and death. It's far too morbid, it's far too sad, and far too morbid. Never your jam. Your jam was light. It was laughter. As I search my heart for the words I want to say to you, about you, for you I cannot help but look at that picture...it is the only one of you and I ever taken just the two of us, my Grandmother took it, on her back deck on our way to Sunriver. You obliged my pilgrimage to my grandmothers as we were about to head over the mountain. I cannot tell where you end and where I begin. Your brown hair to my shocking blonde. We were a pair you and me, me and you.

I remember this trip like it was yesterday...in the round house by the train tracks, I have a beautiful picture of you playing cards, you were sitting at the coffee table on the floor playing solitaire. You were a stunning young woman. Tall, lean, with a laugh that could move mountains. Everyone loved you, they still do. I doubt you ever truly understood your magic. This was the trip one whole side of your body got sunburned at Lake Billy Chinook. You're holding a beer, don't worry, I won't tell your mom...but I have had drinks with her in my adult life, you two would have been friends.

As I write these words, I realize I could write you a novel about everything that has happened. Who we all have become. I have so many words but they won't come out, just tears, tears for the memories we made, tears for the memories we have missed out on, tears for you, tears for your family, tears for myself. I am sorry I didn't know what I was doing then. I am sorry I didn't figure it out sooner...but the moment I did you were gone. Maybe that is the way it was meant to be. Maybe you saved me. Maybe I saved myself. I guess we will never really know. I do know that I miss you. I miss you every day. Every god damned day. I wish you were here. I wish you were here every god damned day. I would give anything to hug you again, to drink a glass of wine with you. To drink a real adult, civilized, legal glass of wine with you.

Ah!! I promised myself that wouldn't cry. I cannot help it. Tears are flowing like Oregon rain. Like today it poured and now it is beautiful. Typical Oregon, that much hasn't changed. God I miss you. I miss you like crazy. If I could do it all again I would every bit of it just to do it all again with you. I could spend hours just talking to you, as if you were reading these very words. I have so much to tell you. I am sorry that it has taken me this long to write them down, to tell you them. I wish that I could hear you answer back...you would laugh at me. Tell me that I was being silly for being sad as these tears fall down my face yet I am giggling at our misadventures. I am curious as to the chemical makeup of my tears...since sad ones are different than tears of joy and right now I have them both. Ha.

Our misadventures, we had fun. We had lots of fun. We were carefree, you would be proud to know that part of me is coming back. After you were gone, and everything changed that went away, it died, it hid. I promise though it is returning. I still laugh at my own jokes, I still fall down - like literally fall down, yesterday I fell in the work shitter, while someone was doing just that.

Happy birthday my friend. My best friend. My sister. My partner in crime. I miss you, I will miss you forever, until the day that we are both trees, or wind or water, and we can be a part of the same forest, the same river, the same cool summer breeze. Until then I will hold down the fort, drink the legal glasses of wine, I will squeeze your mom, I will harass your sister (even though she is much taller than I and now an adult, with a child and not the "annoying" little sister we once thought she was - she is pretty great. I will squeeze your namesake a little tighter tonight, make her laugh so that I can hear the echoes of yours. Cheers darling. Here's to our one day adventure in the great beyond. Until next year...when I will have new and better words to say.

#friendship #loss #love #lifetypestuff