I do have one very different kind of friend, one who has been at the top of my list of the most comforting people to me over the loss of my brother. It's a different kind of friend, not because of who she is, but because of the story of how we have remained close.
She doesn't yet know that I have a blog (I'll send it to her after this entry) and I'm not sure how she would feel about me writing about her, so I'll change her name to "B". I actually do have another best girl who I call "B" but I'm sure she won't mind sharing her initial for the sake of this entry.
I believe that "B" and I have an "arranged friendship". I think it was arranged by God. Let me explain...
I met B when I was 25, a bride-to-be, extremely naive, and very idealistic. I was surely nauseatingly optimistic, bopping around singing about my wedding, my dreamy fiancee, and in general just being blonde and obnoxious. She loved to tease me about how wonderful it must be to get ready with the birds and the squirrels each morning.
B was a "cool girl". Her white Hanes t-shirt would hang out from under her sweaters (it was her signature look), her hair was always in a messy ponytail, she wore converse with everything, she had beautiful make-up free skin, and wore dark-rimmed trendy hipster glasses before they were trendy. I would look at her and think, "I wish I could be real and chill 'go with the flow' like B."
We were pretty different, to say the least. However, we instantly loved each other.
We taught together in the same poorly run, pathetically paid, and gossipy school where parents ruled the classrooms and the teachers with intimidation and the fact that they paid tuition for their children to attend. It was a zoo. Sometimes we felt like we were teaching in some alternate universe where logic did not exist.
B and I would support each other by complaining during recess duty, crying at lunch, making the students pass notes for us, and meeting for drinks after particularly ridiculous days.
What made the year even more dreadful for B is that in the summer months before the school year started, she lost her best friend to cancer. That's correct. We've lost best friends and little brothers...IN THEIR TWENTIES. That type of tragedy puts me and B into a category; "I Lost Someone Before Their Time, This Doesn't Make Sense, Why Did They Leave Me Here, Heaven Is Still Too Many Damn Decades Away For Me to Bear It" category.
Several years have passed, we both have left The School for the Insane, we both have acquired husbands, she has a beautiful daughter, and has moved hours away from our former stomping ground. In the in-between years, we have texted sporadically, kept in touch over Facebook, and well....that's about it. If she still lived here, I think we would meet for happy hours but that is not the way our paths took us.
However, God arranged our friendship so that in all of my friendships, I would have one girlfriend who understood the type of grief that comes from losing a best friend tragically, too quickly, and at an unfairly young age. Not very many people fully understand what that type of death can do to you, a family, your life, or how it truly creeps into and infiltrates every corner of your being.
Not very many people truly understand what if feels like to have that loved one's name run through your mind by the minute, but know that no matter how many times you say it, it will never be heard by them again.
"B" understands that and so much more about my grief. She has understood my need to laugh over ridiculous inside jokes via text message, and she has known the appropriate times to let me vent, or to validate my pain. She and I have only communicated over text messages, and a few Facebook emails since I have lost Matt. Her texts have been some of the most therapeutic thoughts shared with me since I have lost my brother.
One of my favorite texts from her over the last few months said this:
"There is something that happens to you, though. Like when you're so hurt and angry and sad-you're just stripped down to your bones-when you're that vulnerable amazing things happen."
She just "gets it". Beyond that, she encourages me by telling me that in time, I will start to heal. I will miss him for all of my life, but she promised me that it won't always be so excruciating.
In all of the funny, heartfelt, loving, compassionate and beautiful texts that B has sent me, the most perfect of all came on the morning of Matt's first birthday in heaven. I had posted on Facebook early that morning, a picture of he and I together. I had reminisced on past birthdays with him, and commented on how magical his first birthday in heaven must be.
At about 7:30 a.m., I noticed a text from B.
"Julia! Stop-today is Matt's birthday? Please find some sort of strange comfort in this: today is her birthday too. I always celebrate her birthday (tonight baking Christmas treats and drinking wine, like I remember doing with her) and now I have another reason to celebrate. This is too much of a coincidence. They are together, watching over each other, and us. And now I'm crying. But I feel happy that she has someone to celebrate with."
B had seen my Facebook post that morning, and realized that Matt and her best friend were in heaven at that moment, chuckling at us here on earth having realized that they were together, celebrating December 19th.
Matt wasn't a huge baker and wine drinker, and I don't know if B's best girl would have had deep dish pizza and ice cream cake on her birthday, but can we really even comprehend the way that they are celebrating together in heaven?
God gave me B so that during these first months after Matt has gone to heaven, my phone would light up with texts randomly throughout the day, with jokes and thoughts of love from a girlfriend who understands my pain.
Is the common birthday just a coincidence? Absolutely not. God has ways of showing us that He is here, that He IS in control, and He IS taking care of us.
In our intense grief of December 19th, God gave B and I a little reminder of that beautiful truth. He arranged our friendship so that six years after our initial meeting, in my new and raw grief, and in her old and mature pain, we would be brought together again to comfort one another.
I still wear the Converse. Love you Miller.
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