Maybe this post should be titled "
Growing Apart from Heather." Who knows? We report, you decide.
Those of you who have been paying attention over the years know that my best friend's name is Heather. What you might not realize is that she and I have not spoken in a year. Typically us, we've had yet another falling out. To her credit, she has put up with many years of not knowing which Wendy she would face on any given day: the heartbroken romantic, the promsicuous vixen, the angry anti-establishment psychopath, the tightly wound bomb waiting to go off, or the silent sullen unhappy child. She has met them all, held relationships with many of them, and nurtured some of them like pets or children. She has lived with us, alongside us. She has shared a bathroom with us, and when things were particularly tough, a bed. No one can be expected to juggle Wendys forever, and I do believe my dear Heather is out to pasture, hoping to live out the rest of her life like normal people do. Burnt out by the storm that is Wendy, and only 31 years of age. Thirty-one today. Happy Birthday, Heather.
We met at a hard time in both our lives: highschool. We came and went throughout each other's lives in the years that followed. We could tell we loved each other, because half the time we hated each other. She was there when my mother died. She wasn't there when my father died. But she was there for a lot of the hell that followed. Was I there for her? Possibly. Nacissistic navel gazer that I am, I wouldn't have noticed. I hope I was. I know I played her understudy to her toughest audience on and off for a few years. The stand in. Hopefully that took some of the burden off her shoulders. But anger made us miss each other's weddings. We are at polar opposites on our views of the world. I have thrown myself into the world of politics and news - the world she was supposed to inhabit - and she has shut the door on the evil within man. I am right wing. She went to Concordia, ferchrissakes! I've been around blocks she's been too scared to walk down. And yet I know she's stronger than me, in that way women of a certain century are strong, with silence and stubborn innocence.
The relationships she has nursed me through: the loss of my first love (and the loss of the Cottage, which was greater). Convincing me that my second love wasn't what I really wanted, though he was something important, and I should hang onto him. Marrying me off to the one who truly was my second, who she introduced me to. The various in-betweeners; one-night stands, strangers, friends with benefits, and clients. When she learned what I was doing, and poohpoohed it, she learned that it truly was part of my nature to be.. shall we say.. entrepreneurial... and stoically stood by.
So tally that up: We've spent 50% of our friendship, including right now, not speaking. We've missed deaths. We've missed weddings. We have fought so hugely and bitterly that innocent bystanders have been blinded by it.
How can I call that a friendship? And how can I call her my best friend??
Because she is. Pure and simple. There are some things you just know about a person, and about their place in your life. We may never speak again (chances are very strong that we won't, and I am finally at peace with that after so long), but in the grand scheme of friendship, she was - is - the very best.
I know in my NyQuil haze I have not done justice to the subject of Heather, especially when you consider the veritable tomes I've written on the subject. But the funny thing is that when the day comes that my body is cold, all the finger sandwiches are eaten, the last of the scotch has been had, and I am just dust on a hillside far from here, it is to Heather that those tomes will go. She will be the one to crack their spines, to know of everything she's missed in between, to guard the secrets and tell the tales. It is not to my beloved husband that the volumes will go, for he would not be able to rest when faced with the content. It is to Heather I will give my last, and my greatest gift. All the words I never spoke.
