"I went to the ER Tuesday night,” I said.
“What?! Why?” Exclaimed Sammy.
“I guess I had a weird reaction to a bug bite,” I replied. I pulled up the jeans on my right leg and showed her the dark red markings that crawled up to my thigh.
“It looks like they're painted on,” she said.
“They are. I needed more attention now that what happened last year is old news.”
The three of us laughed.
“My dad just died!” She said while laughing.
“Yeah, I couldn’t stand that you took the attention away from me.”
We laughed hard and sighed with the sadness of the situation.
The three of us sat around the shaded table on the patio. Her dad had passed away almost two weeks ago.
Steph and I didn't know how to react. Everything seemed so fragile. Both of us were afraid of how to be a good friend during this difficult time. Should we get her flowers? Should we ask if we can visit? Does she need more time?
But here we were. Welcomed with sad hugs and now sitting together, picking up where we had last left off.
We have been close friends for more than twenty years.
I had just seen Sammy a few weeks prior at Target. We were laughing uncontrollably as I made jokes about buying tampons.
And now this.
None of us expected to lose a parent this young. None of us could be prepared for this. We still need our parents.
So we dealt with it the only way we knew how.
We shared our lives, tried to make each other laugh, and fed off the comfort that the three of us have brought each other for more than two decades.