I debated writing this post.

These are probably the most personal words I have ever written, yet I feel guilty about writing them.

My friend is dying of cancer. She has been given only hours to live.

Despite the tears making wet trails down my cheeks, I feel guilty about the enormity of my grief.  Her husband, children, parents and even other friends are losing someone who occupied a much bigger space in their lives.

I feel guilty because they value their privacy and my friend’s privacy, and I don’t want to violate that.

And yet, as always, I feel the incredible need to write something about the situation. I feel as though putting my thoughts into a concrete form will somehow make sense of an incredibly unfair situation.

If my friend, the lawyer by education and the social worker by heart, could read these words, I know exactly what she’d say.

She’d tilt her head ever so slightly, give me a sidelong glance and say “curious.”

My friend never understood why I wrote.

I remember one particular conversation that occurred while we sat drinking margaritas as we looked out over Pamlico Sound in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

“You write for pleasure?” she asked in her trademark flat yet completely expressive voice.

We were discussing a possible career change for me, and she was trying to make sense of what she considered a completely ridiculous notion that being creative could actually be a profession.

“But who would read what you wrote?” she asked.

“You already do,” I replied.

“Yeah, but I don’t pay for it,” she said.

That ended the conversation but not our friendship.

Now, on an extremely cold February night, I’m grieving the loss of that friendship while simultaneously trying to remember how it even began.

I remember how we met, but I can’t remember how we grew from being acquaintances to being friends. I can’t remember when she became THE person I texted when I was most pissed off because I knew she would respond with some sardonic comment that would make me feel better.

Just today, despite a final visit to her hospital room yesterday, I found myself picking up my phone to tell her about a completely ridiculous situation.

That was the bittersweet moment when I realized that her diagnosis of cancer had gifted me with a reminder about the value of time, of enjoying completely inane moments and of appreciating the sometimes random events of life that bring people together.

Cancer completely sucks, but it also has the amazing ability to remind us of how beautiful life can be.

As my friend would say, “curious.”

I’ll miss hearing her say those words, but I’ll never forget how they always made me smile.

This final goodbye would be much  more difficult  if she hadn’t given me so many of those smiles.

Thank you my friend.

Thank you so very, very much.