There were so many brisk afternoons at the end of winter, at the end of my high school career, in which I didn’t want to go home. There was this ache in my heart that wouldn’t go away, kind of the way your stomach hurts when you haven’t eaten. Except I didn’t know what was wrong with me or how to fix it. So at five in the morning, when I woke in a panic, I would call my best friend who was in college and undoubtedly up studying. She would stay with me until it was time to start the day, soothe me by simply being on the other line, relieving me of my unbearable solitude for at least a little while. In the afternoons, I wandered from bookstores to malls to airports, trying to find some hope, some end to the darkness I harbored. -- There was this one girl who was oftentimes party to my meanderings. I am not sure if she was aware of how much her companionship had meant, but nevertheless, she was always game to whatever it was I would suggest doing and I always appreciated her company. Our brothers were the same age. We chatted about them over mocha lattes and biscotti in the same frivolous, dismissive way we talked about who got into what college and how good a kisser that one guy was whom we had both hooked up with on different occasions. We wondered if they were friends, our brothers, but then dismissed that notion as well, since hers was kind of a skater punk (her words, not mine) and David was… well, he definitely wasn’t a skater punk…. She was never one of my best friends, but for some reason our lives always intersected. We probably would not have communicated in college, except she ended up at the same place I was. So we would occasionally meet up for coffee. And then there was that one night things got a little crazy when she came with me to some launch party that a couple of people I knew were throwing. We flirted all night with two guys whose names were Mike and Mike, except I think she ended up going home alone and I didn’t…. After I graduated, we lost touch until she showed up to my brother’s funeral. I looked up, and there she was, hugging me (and I guess I finally got the answer to the question of whether our brothers had been friends). I was grateful that she’d been there – again, more than she probably realized. We exchanged phone numbers and business cards. I cracked a grin and made some comment about how old we were getting. Who the hell would have imagined that we’d have business cards to exchange?? (And then, of course, we didn’t really communicate, though when I moved back to NY, I did find that business card crammed in a Diesel gym bag that I had given my brother for his high school graduation. I filed it away with the stack of business contacts and doctors’ numbers that I had piled up in the corner of my desk). Then last year, the day that I closed on the little house I bought, Paul and I almost literally walked into her at the Ikea down on Delaware Ave in Philadelphia. We were walking in to buy some miscellaneous things, like a shower curtain and a garbage can, and there she was walking out, hand in hand with some guy whose name I now forget. I yelled out to her and she turned around, looking surprised but pleased. She introduced me to her boyfriend as “Joanna, one of my best friends from high school.” This made me laugh, because it wasn’t completely true, but I thought it was awfully sweet of her to phrase it that way. We exchanged phone numbers again. I politely pretended that I didn’t already have her number in my phone and took it down again. And then, of course, I didn’t call. I was still too busy mourning and settling into the new life that I had hastily taken on. -- I just found out two days ago that her brother had passed away last week. It was unexpected and cruel and unfair, and I could only imagine what she and her family were going through. He was twenty-two, the same age David would have been, of course. He was two years older than my brother had been when he left - and still much, much too young to be taken so abruptly. I picked up the phone a dozen times, trying to find the words, wondering if she would even want to hear from me, who probably could understand her pain better than most of the people around her. I couldn’t figure out if this made it better or worse. I cried for her, remembering how the past two years have been for me, hoping that it would be at least a little easier for her (though of course, it never happens like that either). I cried for her parents and my own parents, the heart ache of having to bury their only sons, two boys who were tall and healthy and smart and had the rest of their lives before them. And then I finally called her and told her the only things that I had wanted to hear – that I was thinking of her and sending her my love. (I know from first-hand experience that nothing can be said to make it better; you just have to be there). | 
