Happy Birthday.

To Carrie, my best friend growing up.  Yesterday was her 39th birthday, but she is forever young.  She died 17 years ago at the ripe old age of 22 from a massive heart attack, devastating all of us who loved her.  I was 21 years old.  Memories of that night are forever burned into my brain.  I thought old people were the ones who died.  I learned a quick lesson that night.  Our time here is not guaranteed.  I also learned that YOU need to take care of your health, that you can’t rely on doctors to always have the answers.  If you feel that something is wrong and your doctor won’t act on it then find another doctor who will.  I saw firsthand how losing a child changes a person.  Carrie’s mother, who had always been like my own mother, changed that night inside.  She has never been the same.  She has never again been the mother I knew growing up. 

But I try to hang onto the good memories.  I’ve got tons of photos.  Carrie and I both loved taking photos, and I inherited a lot of hers and also borrowed some from her mom to copy.  I haven’t yet made my scrapbook, first because I was not a scrapbooker, then because it was too hard still.  Two years ago I pulled out the photos and drew a few sketches up and made a few plans for scrapbook pages, but that was as far as I got.  Turns out it was still hard.  Funny how 17 years feels like such a short time. 

Something else that makes it hard is that I want it to be special.  I don’t want to just make a ”best friends forever” scrapbook.  I want the book to have meaning, because she did.  We were so much more than friends.  She was my soul sister.  She knew me better than anybody in the world.  Even now nobody knows me as well as she did.  We went through all that teenage angst you go through as kids growing up.  We lived 2 houses from each other.  We bonded in a way as kids that you just don’t bond with friends once you’re an adult.  You develop friendships differently when you’re grown up.  Something I’ll always be grateful for is that we were never afraid to tell each other “I love you.”  They were the last words we said to each other the night before she died.  “Love you.”  “Love you too.”  “See you later.”

I still miss her.