Every once in a while - in life - you are treated with something that is too beautiful for you to even bear. Sometimes they are moments, sometimes they are people, sometimes they are things - but they truly are things that you won't forget.
I had this amazing friend in my life that I loved so much that it hurt. She was my everything - she was my ears, my heart, my mind. We used to watch Oprah in the afternoons before I had to pick up my son from daycare and drink tea. We used to go furniture shopping with her husband where we would price out all of the furniture to see which one had the best deal. She let me see parts of her marriage that most friends would hide - and that taught me how to be a wife to my own husband when I was lucky enough to be married.
I moved away, and as with most moves, we kind of drifted apart. Life takes you on wild rides, and time flies, and before you know it, those moments are but a memory of your past. I never forgot what that time was like with her, and even in my darkest moments, I would remember how she would encourage me and that alone would help me press forward.
Then we were reunited through good ol' FB. It was such an intense reunion - there was so much to say and get through and I felt like I was so indebted to her for all that she had done in my life - whether she knew it or not. We were again fast friends but life had different plans for us.
I desperately needed a friend and confidante - I was married, helping a beleagured husband battle alcohol addiction, raising three kids, and still trying to learn how to be a mother for myself. She is the mother to three wonderful children, a wife to a great man, and the arch-nemesis of Juvenile Diabetes. Her daughter was diagnosed with JD when she was just 18 months old - and no matter how much we like to say that we know what she is going through, we just don't. I didn't know how to be her friend, and I needed more from her than she could give.
We again drifted apart, but I still watched her progress through different pages and forums on FB, and watched her start a photography business and be a HUGE advocate for JDRF - Juvenile Diabetes Reserach Foundation. She has travelled and spoken at many conventions and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for her (family's) cause and through the miracle of internet, watched her touch hundreds of lives, one person at a time.
When she writes, I feel like I'm looking at God himself in her image. It is like the light she shines is so bright it burns, and to be able to look at it for more than a few seconds is to be consumed in its fire. I can't tell you how her words and her pictures affect me - it's like she speaks right to the core of my soul.
I once referred to myself as the soil that fertilized her tree. She has transformed into a mighty oak - strong and tall and beautiful - and I often feel left in her shadow. I hope that she loves me still as much as I love her, as I will never forget the lessons that her and her husband taught me about what it was to love someone - to be a parent - to be a partner. And to this day, I still learn from them daily through the pictures and words that she writes, and often, I'm too tongue tied to be able to rightly tell her how she inspires me.
And that is my something beautiful. I will never forget her all the days of my life, and from our humble beginnings, I can rejoice in all of her accomplishments, and still watch her kids grow. I can't be the friend that she might have needed me to be, and I'm sorry for the times that I have missed. But I do know that with all the love I feel when I think of her, her husband, and her beautiful family, I hope they know that they are my something beautiful.
I am blessed to have known them, to be able to say that she was my friend. That she still is my friend. And sometimes, in the face of that something beautiful, all you can do is let it shine brightly for the world to see. I can't hide it for myself, which is what I think I tried to do - the world needs people like her!
We should all be so lucky to know someone like that.
