My Lost Girl

It's a story you've already heard a million times and it starts like so many do:

Heard it from a friend who...

Tagged me on FB Messenger to tell me our mutual friend had died. The mutual friend who I'd spoken to a couple of weeks ago.  The mutual friend who fell into a bottle and couldn't find the way out.  The mutual friend who'd just completed her inpatient rehab after so many years of denial.  

The one who always called to check in. Who told you if your jeans made your butt look big, or that your tag was out, or that the man you were with was an asshole, or that you were beautiful even when you weren't.   

There's a hole in my life where she lived and it hurts too much to fill it or cover it up because to do that would mean I have to let go. And I'm just not ready.  

I don't know how she died, but I don't have to.  She'd been increasingly ill and frail.  We knew it would happen sometime, but not today. No, not yet. 

So, the grief just comes in like an unwelcome guest, riding in on a song,a phrase, a color, a voice that's almost but not quite hers. 

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