My closest friend Therese passed away on the 4th. It's still so hard to process and I'm not sure if I believe yet that she's really gone. I keep expecting my phone to ring, to hear her silly laugh and her dirty stories. She was the only one besides my husband that I felt I could be my ugly self around and she'd still love me.
Her mom showed me her urn today. It's this bright purple monstrosity that I think she'd find hilarious. I'm constantly finding dark things she would keel over laughing at.
Case in point, this girl Therese introduced me to, our own personal Chris Chan, reached out to me to offer condolences and in the same breath asked if we could meet and smoke a j. I could almost hear Therese giggling. I don't want to meet this girl in person because she's insistently polyamorous, but I know I have to do it for Therese.
I've never lost anyone this close to me before. And ironically so far away. I never thought for a second that the first time we'd physically be in a room together, one of us would be in an urn.
She'd posted a few weeks before she passed that she wanted me and a few others to have some of her ashes if she died. At the time I was hesitant but now that she's gone I want a piece of her.
That sounds weird.. but I want something tangible, to prove to myself that she did exist. 10+ years of friendship, and a month into her absence, it's like I hallucinated her. I don't want her to fade, I want to keep her laugh and her spite and her fire alive.
I miss her so much my chest hurts. I would trade or give anything for a phone call about nothing with her again.
She was going through her own mourning for her boyfriend and I kept telling her it was going to get better, it WAS going to get better...I hate that I'm a liar. It's so cheap to her, it's so unfair. All these minutes I'm wasting alive should have been hers.
Therese saved five lives with her organs. I know we prided ourselves on being haters and cynical together but she really was a gemstone. She was kind and fiery and stubborn and ridiculous and infinitely cooler than anyone I know. She was my tastemaker and the older sister I never had. She was the strongest person I've ever met. My yaoi queen, my Nick Cave stan, my Madame Therese.