Best Friends

I met Jan on the first day of high school when she walked into speech class and sat down next to me.  We started a conversation that day that lasted for eight years.  We talked through speech class, we talked through band camp, we talked through typing class (until I got moved to the other side of the room), we talked through synchronized swimming, we spent our summers by the pool talking and laughing with friends, we attended the same university and we talked through our years there.  But we haven't talked in the last 15 years.  We didn't have a disagreement or turn our backs on each other; rather she married and moved to Utah and I stayed in Michigan and neither of us were very good at correspondence. We were each busy with our own lives but I have absolutely no doubt that if we ran into each other on the street we would have taken up right where we left off 15 years earlier because that's the way we were.

Jan died this week.  When I think of her now it won't be as my friend who lives in Utah.  Instead, I remember her as she was in high school and college; the friend who lent me her car, the friend who constantly told me to stop worrying, and yes, the friend who got me in trouble in Mr. Bigelow's typing class for talking too much.  The last time I saw her was at a picnic years ago.  We were both in our 40's  and I remember so clearly, she was jumping on a trampoline and laughing and her streaky blond hair was flying everywhere and it's a picture of her that is so real and true to who she was that it makes me grateful to be able to remember her that way.  I am blessed to have known her.