i miss my yesterdays

This is hard, you guys.

 In sixth grade, I switched schools. The friends I made that year have stuck with me - through high school. college and boyfriends and husbands and lives. Even though we don't talk all the time, (and I live 1500 miles away, so there aren't any coffee dates) there is Facebook and email and the phone.

I miss them, my gang.

I moved three hours north of my hometown, and one of my friends (M) came with me. We were roommates for three years. I couldn't imagine my relationship with her ever changing - I thought we'd always be in each others' lives, giggling and carrying on and poking old men with our canes at the nursing home.

But then I met Bear, and married Bear, and moved,(1500 miles this time) and we started to get distant. She was still in single-girl mode, while I had an infant and a husband and new priorities, new horizons. We were still friends, but it started to get quieter.

The last time we talked I was pregnant with Rosey. She was dating a man that wanted all her attention, and didn't like her on the phone with her far-flung friend so much, and so the phone calls just....petered out.

Yes, she realized he was an asshole. But by then I was in the midst of new-baby hell and -

And then it was five years later.

Last week I got a phone call from her older brother. M's Mom had died, and when the brother got there, he realized M was acting funny. My brave, sweet, funnier-than-anyone friend M is in the hospital right now, and no one knows what's going to happen next.

It seems her liver is not well. Why doesn't matter so much (and I think for her privacy I'm not putting that out there) but it will be a long, hard road back

And she's lost time. M thinks we're all in high school. She speaks slowly, and it's obviously an effort, but her voice is peppered with references of a time when I worked at an outlet mall and went dancing on the weekends.

When I lived close, and could bring her dessert, like she asked me to tonight.

This is really, really hard.

Because she sounded exactly like the M I remember, the one I hung out with and giggled with and talked about our dreams and hopes and that cute guy in the nice car that winked at me and I never, ever thought I'd hear that again.

It makes me want to rage, that I've found my friend again and might lose her forever.

M's 39th birthday? Is on Easter Monday.

Too young. Too young for such troubles.