My Best Friend's Mother

My best friend's mother died this morning from pancreatic cancer. I want to rock her in my arms right now, my friend, my sister, but she's miles away where she needs to be, the family all loving each other with all their might, all of them beginning the gradual process of getting their legs back under them again in this changed world they now find themselves in.

Your best friend's mother is like your mother once removed...she's proudest of her own precious girl, and then, because her own precious girl adopted you to be her sister, she's second proudest of you. From our high school plays to our wedding days.

Speaking of which, at my first fitting for my wedding gown, my mom-once-removed was there in that big, glamorous dressing room with us, mothers and daughters and sisters, a gaggle of giggling girls, and she said to me as they were pulling the dress over my head, "You've always had such great legs, Trace." I'll never forget it. I've believed in the greatness of my legs since that day. Because when Carol said it, you knew it was the real deal, no bullshit. That's Carol.

This mother has given away lots of gifts in her life, to everyone who's ever known her...for me, the greatest is probably the ten-pound daughter she helped usher into the world of form. Sometimes it seems like she did this expressly for me. That's how it is with someone who makes your world a better place just by existing in it. And yes, ten pounds. If you know Lisa today you probably find it hard to believe she started out such a giant, she's such a petite little shortcake now that she's all grown up. What's not little about her is her heart or her soul or her spirit...that's what that ten-pound beginning portended. It's the size of this great heart and this great soul and this great spirit that's going to turn sadness to joy and tears into laughter again, it's an alchemy that's inevitable and closer than the air we breathe. Just like her mother will always be for her precious girl, as much today and tomorrow and forever as she's ever been, closer than the air we breathe.

I love you, Lis.