Haylie Grace Willard died when we were 18. She was my best friend in the whole world since before I can recall. Our parents were friends before any of us kids arrived. We moved across the country a few times and ended up in Nashville, ready to run across the green-grassed yard and reunite in an embrace.  We spent life together. We planned entire days of eating ramen soup and watching MacGyver (episodes with Murdoc were the best, and we could never understand his choices in women but were pretty sure one of us would marry him one day). We named countless kittens, argued over who would wear the poofiest dress, and spent years focused on things other than figuring out what parts of us were broken and why. I don’t write this to preserve my memories; I won’t lose them. I write this as a testimony of love and solitude in friendship. No one will ever know me the way she did. Her struggles were often frustrating for me. I didn’t get why she cared so much about the size of her feet or her need for depthless affirmation. And on the other side, my side, I didn’t understand why I kept pushing at time to hurry up and slow down. I had a serious pull to gain control and independence. I’m sure that was annoying to her. Neither of us tried much to understand these things—until we were 16. Then we started discussing the internal confusion, our brains, our hearts. We both made fantastically awful decisions over the next two years. And some good ones too. Our connection grew stronger while compartmentalized sections of our hearts closed doors to each other. We both still knew what the other was doing. We were coping and grasping and mistaking want for need. We could still sit in a car together for hours listening to Lauryn Hill without saying a word and it was healing, it was love, it was solitude. And then reasons culminated—real ones, bullshit ones —and Haylie jumped off the top of the Sheraton hotel downtown. She landed on her feet and left her body here.

Nine years ago August 29. I grieve her. I give tears over her lost years. She never met my son, couldn’t make my wedding, can’t answer my phone calls, doesn’t borrow my clothes, will never have her own babies or fall in love. I mourn that she will not be here to meet this tiny life that grows inside me now. But I know what it means to be known and loved. And forgiven. She understood compassion like Jesus of Nazareth gave it. She gave and gave and poured herself out for others. Too much, I told her; you give too much and don’t know when to stop. I want this—unconditional love. I want it for my children. I want it for my world.