somewhere deep in the colorado rockies, the second group of people arrived. i was part of the first group whose flights had come in earlier in the day.

she burst into the room. she was loud. she was funny. she was furious that we had to take turns showering – she exclaimed that she needed two showers a day and this proposed schedule simply wouldn’t work for her. when asked to choose a nickname for the week, she demanded we call her “queens.” i loved her immediately.

we were at cancer camp. where they fling a bunch of strangers together for a week in the wilderness and make you do outdoorsy things (rock climbing, in our case). group dynamics can be so strange. but for us, it was magic. we all fell in love. some love stories went deeper than others, like ours.

i don’t remember the first words we exchanged. i don’t recall what we initially connected over. i won’t ever forget those late nights of talking. playing games. and the most inappropriate (and vulgar) things i’ve possibly ever heard. the years of text exchanges after that first magical week. the trip to nyc where i was recovering from a devastating miscarriage and she was about to go in for her latest scan. there was a longstanding joke about dicks & feet and i’m no longer sure where it originated, but i think it was one of those late nights in the mountains. there was so much laughter. there were so many tears. we lost friends. i made a person.

she loved her people so well. and if you were lucky enough to be in her orbit, she would tell you how special you were, all the time. she had no ego, she just loved. even in some of my darkest and brattiest moments (infertility is hard, and hearing about others getting pregnant did not result in me being my best self or handling the news with grace), she let me carry on and just loved me. and when the moment called for it, she commiserated.

including this next image because she sent it to me in our text thread.

i still can’t wrap my head around her being gone. it will never make sense to me. i can’t fathom visiting new york and not seeing her. who else is going to try and convince me that all the bread at the bakery is gluten-free (when it very clearly isn’t), milkshakes make a pregnancy stick, and that dating rappers is a good idea?

i scroll through our messages every few months (i can’t bring myself to delete them). gosh, she was funny. and wild. in all the best ways.

her death broke up the band. we lost others over the years, but she was the glue holding us together. she’s the one who arranged the video calls. she’s the one who forced me out of my bubble. she’s the one whose death i can still barely talk about, let alone accept.

nyc won’t be the same without her. and neither will i.