Best Friend

Buckets full of woe today. What started as a relatively awesome morning ended hunched over in tears on the side of 281. My sister called to tell me that my mom's best friend had died in a fire. This friend who I'd known since I was a toddler. Who I grew up with. Whose own daughter was a friend and my same age when she died at 15 in a car accident. Who was like a second mom to my family. This was the woman who understood my mom better than anyone in the whole world. Who even though they were eventually two states away from each other would talk to my mom multiple times a day just to vent, laugh and check in.

I spent the afternoon on the phone back and forth between the hub and my sisters and my mom, and it really wasn't a surprise when the details were filled in by the evening that she had actually been murdered.

Someone had killed her -- wounds around her neck and head -- and then set three fires in the house trying to cover up the murder. A neighbor dialed 911 after seeing smoke, and once reinforcements arrived and extinguished the small fire, they found her upstairs, dead in bed. I don't want to say anything until it is official, but we all have a pretty good idea who did it.

At this point, it is just overwhelming how much shit our two families have been through together. My mom actually met this woman in church. Mom noticed a woman crying during the service, and afterwards, she went over and engaged her... it ends up they both were coming off of heavy and turbulent divorces and the two just connected. All through my youth, our families ran together. And I have to say that she was probably the best friend my mom ever had. They had a real bond that was a delight to see. When together, they were like two girls plotting a secret party, so engrossed in conversation and feelings and love that it was often hard to be with them... outsiders were very rarely let in.

When her daughter died, the bond became even greater. Because my mother seems to be a beacon for the sad since she has struggled so with sadness herself, this woman often thought my mother was the only one who could really understand losing a child. She was racked for years and years with the what and the why, often turning to my mom for spiritual guidance on how to move forward, what is the afterlife and what is the meaning of it all.

My late adolescence and young adulthood were heavily marked by that death. Because she died in a car wreck, driving with her learner's permit, I was terrified to learn how to drive. Even though she was a few months younger than me, she always seemed so much more sophisticated and together, and I always felt like such a nerdy little girl in her presence. Plus, I'd never had a friend die before, someone my own age. My first look at just how mortal we all are.

I feel absolutely devastated today. I really don't know what else to say. I weep not just for our friend, but for my mom. A thirty year friendship. Over. My mom will be alone in her everyday.

I suppose the only hope in all this is that now her friend has the answers she was searching for. Now she knows.