She was the girl that became my best friend when we began to eat lunch together in the third grade. 

She was the only girl that could boss the little girl who was often too confident and brazen for her own good.

She was the girl, part of an amazing family that welcomed me so often for Friday night meals of Co-Op pizza or hot dogs from Central Cafe before we stayed up late talking and giggling, bedded down on living room couches covered in flowered sheets.

She was the girl that wrote me letters, hundreds of them, when I was far away at boarding school. I still have those letters.

She was the girl that began a journey of faith when I sought comfort in worldly things.

She was the girl that rang me up to tell me that it was cancer after all and I remember it was she that shed tears and offered the words, “I’m so sorry.”

She was the girl that opened my heart to the kind of faith that I could read in her beautiful eyes even more than those letters.

She was the girl that when the cancer took away her future of ever giving birth, she confided in me that she had always wanted to adopt anyways.

She was the girl that didn’t get to go away to college and I never remember her grumbling.

She was the girl that I fled college so many nights to lie in her bed and talk, about what I can not remember.

She was the girl that I told goodbye and as I left the room, I remembered her tears when I told my brother goodbye just three years earlier.

She was the girl who I ached for the minute I heard the ringing of that phone pierce the quiet of darkness later that night, twenty three years ago today.

She was the girl that scribbled my name on a loose sheet of paper and wrote the words, “My Bible,” beside it and her grieving mother offered me that wonderful gift.

She was the girl whose life was amazingly wonderful for someone who only walked this earth for 18 years.

She was the girl that has propelled my own faith and seeking for a God, that she taught me, loves so very big.

Missy.