My best friend’s mum has just died.
I do not have all the specifics but I don’t need them to know that if, in a few minutes, she tells me she needs me to defeat the 1032 km separating us, I will find a way. Even among restrictions, lockdowns, shut-down public transports, and limited days off painstakingly saved for the upcoming holidays, I will find a way to be with her in her time of need.
My love for her is fierce and infinite and I can only hope that throughout the years it has also been loud enough to make her understand that.
We met nearly two decades ago during my year studying abroad; me, a hopeless nerd just starting to explore the world outside the textbooks, her, impossibly stylish, beautiful, and fun-loving, the epitome of a cool girl, just steps away from her BA in Philosophy. A highly unlikely pair, we bonded immediately over dinners cooked and eaten together, cocktails drank in the most popular bars in the city, and outings to the cinema with the customary espresso before and a cuppa after, just before bed. Our lives ran parallel for a very short time but in those few months, one whole, joyous, intense, exciting, hectic life was lived by yours truly.
Being separated by life and distance ever since, we both travelled back and forth, trying to keep in touch via video calls and mail. With time, though, visits became rare and ever more sparse in between as jobs and children took their toll. Somehow, for some reason, we utterly failed to take advantage of all the technology the modern times have to offer. But my affection for her never quivered as I’m sure hers for me never has either.
She was the maid of honor at my wedding before which I can clearly remember thinking, and later telling her, that if my married life was going to be half as fun, half as filled with love and acceptance as our time spent together had been, then it was going to be an exceptionally good marriage. That was the reason I’d chosen her.
We met the last time three summers ago, when by chance, I was holidaying with my family close to her new home. And it was as if no time had elapsed at all. As if there had never been any years or kilometres separating us, all the emotions, all the silly giggles, the unsaid words (because there is no need to say them out loud), and the invisible bond binding us to one another were still there. Unchanged and undiluted.
She has always accepted and loved me with all of my innumerable flaws, with all the mistakes, through thick and thin, good and bad. She saw me at my most raw, most vulnerable, most messy and ugly, most vindictive. And didn’t run. She stayed. As steady as a rock, she guided me out of the fog and utter confusion back into the light. She listened more than talked and never imposed her opinion or pretended to have all the answers. She hugged and offered a walk ending in a gelato.
So now my time has come to offer the same – a steady presence, a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, and a gelato. Be it in person or virtually.
Ti abbraccio forte,
LARA