A Tribute

In 2005, my friend Aimee died. With the grief fresh, I wrote…

She was my best friend, and although that was more than ten years ago, the memories have been flooding back to me this past week, along with smiles and tears.

Aimee always seemed to be supremely self-confident, I envied her that. She always seemed to trust that things would work out for the best, I remember she would always leave her keys in her car – and would leave the car doors unlocked as well. Aimee was a great listener, a great instigator and a great friend. She had a generous spirit.  I will honor her memory and her spirit, by being confident, by trusting in good and by being a great friend.

It's been six years since then and there have been so many times when I've thought about her and what I learned because of her.

I learned that it hurts like hell to lose a friend, something that happened years before she was lost to me irrevocably.

Aimee and I were best friends for about three years, starting the spring of 1992.  When I wasn't away at college, we were inseparable. (Even then we had weekly phone dates, back when long distance was expensive.) We went out to dinner (the calamari steak sandwich at Rosine's was a favorite), we took long drives down to Big Sur just for the fun of it, we went shopping, and we watched movies. We laughed together, and we shared life’s pains. We loved each other’s company. We were a pair. And then something came between us. I watched as the friend I loved became more and more entangled with the highs and the lows of meth.

When I heard Aimee was dying, I immediately remembered how our friendship had ended. I can still picture where we were: in a booth at a restaurant on Alvarado Street. I sat across from her, telling her I didn't like the person she'd become because of meth. And I can remember how it felt when she seemed to brush off the statement as if it was nothing.

I learned that sometimes the people who seem the strongest are the ones who need protecting the most.

I consider it a gift that I was able to reconnect with Aimee a few years before she died. It was haphazard, via email, not the same close connection we had had, but it was a start. A start that never really got started.

I think of her when I watch any musical theatre production.  I find myself humming the same three notes she used to when savoring a delicious dessert. Any time I procrastinate and coast by on whatever talents God gave me, I think of Aimee, who used to do the same. 

I learned to remind myself that in spite of any secret you might harbor, any hurt you sustained, you are worthy of love.

I'm now the same age as Aimee was when she died. I continue to strive to be confident, truly deeply confident in myself because I am worthy of it.  I strive to be a good friend, wholly present like Aimee was when she was with me.

This post is more melancholy than I wanted it to be. I wish I could explain how Aimee’s laugh made you want to laugh with her. Her quick wit, which would have great to experience on facebook. Her beautiful singing voice which took my breath away. At one time, I knew everything about her, and she about me, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

She was, and always will be, my friend.