BFFs

Have you ever had a friend that you thought would be with you through thick and thin? A best friend who you could confide and and they wouldn’t be judgemental? A best friend that would never betray your trust?

It’s a very rare thing! Yet, everyone I know refers to someone as their best friend. It’s easier to say, my best friend in High School, or my best childhood friend. In many cases a BFF is a family member, most likely a sibling. A stranger that becomes you BFF is a rare thing.

I know my first BFF was my cousin Ellen. When we were little, we were so very close. We always had a fabulous time playing together. When my parents moved our family away from the family hub in Brooklyn, it made it harder for my cousin and I to spend the same amount of time together. She came more often to my house, than I did to her apartment. I have so many memories of us upstate in the Bungalow colony. When not upstate we would go to Coney Island for both the beach and Nathans.

My oldest memory of the two of us, I was perhaps 4 and she 3 was looking out of her bedroom window in Brooklyn and seeing the most beautiful rainbow. Oddly enough, she does not remember it. To me, that rainbow, which was so vivid, was a sign that I was sharing it with my BFF. Time and separation caused huge gaps between us, but when we speak, and it is almost always on the phone, we just pick up where we left off. I so wish we had been able to be closer, but that just never happened. She is always in my heart and in my mind.

I had many friends as a child. One little girl and I had the same name. For years we were close, but circumstances in her life, terrible circumstances made her grow up very quickly and my friend, that little girl had huge responsibilities that were not yet part of my path. I lost contact with her. I kept looking for her though, but really had little to go on. Magically, she found me on line. We tried to speak and catch up but she , like her father before her, had strokes and her memory has been altered. Today she lives in California, and we have communicated a few times, usually around our birthdays which are two days apart.

In High School I definitely had a BFF. We did most things together, but were on different paths. She was brilliant, and beautiful. Her area of inquiry was in Medicine. She started as a nurse, and worked her way up through hard work and degrees. I can’t even tell you all the letters that followed her name She made some bad decisions, had some unrealistic ideas and they took their toll. My friend is gone now. She succumbed to Alcholism . I still miss her, eventhough we rarely communicated towards the end of her life.

My friend Sandy, who I wrote about before, the Real Estate Guru, smoked herself to death. She knew she was destroying her body, she was a chain smoker. In fact everyone in that Real Estate office including the Broker smoked. I didn’t spend that much time inside there, but I can tell you it turned off many a potential client. The place reeked. Sandy’s heart gave out. Trying to diagnose the extent of her heart damage, she died from the effects of a heart catherization procedure. It was one of the hardest funerals I ever attended. She was the HEART of the group, and after her death, the group fell apart.

The worst death for me was from the person I guess who was my BFF since college days. I met Alicia (ALI) when my husband, her husband and the two of us were in college. The three of them were musicians, I was the outsider. She like I was a short, dark haired woman. Tremendously talented flutist. We were from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, but we just blended beautifully. When together and it was usually the four of us, we would laugh our heads off till we couldn’t laugh any more. We would try different restaurants. Perhaps the worst experience happened with her in a restaurant that had advertised a fabulous shrimp dish. We all decided to try it! The food came, presented beautifully. With the very first bite, I felt my tongue swell. I felt like my throat was closing. I started to get hot and my face turned bright red and patchy. I alerted my husband and everyone realized I was having an anaphylactic episode. He quickly called the chef who came out thinking we were going to praise his concoction. When my husband asked what was in the recipe he said, “ I don’t reveal my recipes to anyone!” I was dying there and mumbled with a fat tongue, “Do I look like I want your recipe, just the ingredients!” He refused and we left!

I never ate shrimp again, or blackened seasoning. The Chef was an idiot I guess he was lucky that I didn’t die!

Anyway, the times we had, the fun we had, and finally the sadness we had. My BFF Ali, died of leukemia. I will miss her forever!