My best friend, who died with her family at her side on 9/11/09, used to tell me I was her best friend. What amazes skeptical old me is that I believed her. In fact, her endorsement made me feel so loved and special that sometimes my little old ego got way, way too big for its britches, causing me to pat, pat, pat myself on my back. I also got so full of myself that sometimes I’d even strut around my house after I’d talked to her, because she made me feel so popular. I liked imagining that I was more loved and special than any of her other regular friends, the ones who populated what I have recently found out is a gargantuan, multi-peopled, best friend planet.
Well, get ready for some even more amazing news. There are now (and this is only based on yesterday’s count) 3, 479 other people who claim that she told them they were her best friends. The craziest thing is – we all are. I know you might have a hard time believing me, but let me tell you a few details, and you'll become her best friend, too.
I’m not sure how one short, Canadian-American, maple-syrup-guzzling piano teacher was capable of pulling off convincing so many best-friend-needing people that she loved them the most, but isn’t it downright delightful that she did? She was a brilliant con artist who somehow connected us to her like she was a gigantic surge protector. That’s right - she out and out plugged us all in to her love – maybe so she could keep us from finding out about the gigantic best friend Ponzi scheme she was clandestinely operating.
Yesterday, both the mailman who stopped by and the CVS pharmacist I spoke with on the phone to cancel her pre-ordered prescriptions told me they were her best friends. A few days before, nurses and doctors at the ICU said they were her best friends, even though she never gained consciousness, so we’re talking ESP here. Each and every piano student and their parents who called or stopped by said they were her favorite. Her three daughters individually confessed to me that they were her favorite, as well as absolutely and positively her best friend. Her granddaughter, who can’t speak yet, made it clear to me that she was her Bubbie’s best friend. Her grandson, who can talk, announced he was her best friend (and also her favorite). Each of her dogs yippingly communicated to me that they were her best friends. I know – it’s amazing and wonderful, isn’t it?
Her house has been crawling with people who’ve been coming over and leaving off food and goodies. The phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from people who emphatically assure the machine that they’re her best friends. Aren’t those people lucky, though, to be able to hear her voice again on her answering machine?
Love just keeps on pouring out of all these best friends, like she poured hers all over each and every one of us, each and every day she was alive. She truly was everyone’s best friend, our own, gooey, 100% pure Canadian maple syrup (which you now know she was addicted to) that streamed over, under, around and through us, her endless batch of luscious, best friend pancakes.
Ahh, how good she was to the very last drop.
4 comments:
this is the best thing ever. And I am SURE I am her favourite.
A favorite heavily posted after death of John Lennon: "The friends you make are the friends you take." When a friend who knows our history (and with whom we have a shared history)passes from this life, we can continue on the journey w/out them, gratefully gathering rosebuds while we may. RIP to JR, lovely woman.
I was definitely her favorite piano student...I can remember her telling me that while giving me a fireball or one of those caramel thingies with the white stuff in the middle. Are Shammy and Pucci communicating with you too? She is most certainly missed in an enormous, even maple syrup can't fill kind of a way. Wish I wasn't so far away so I could be there.
What an elegant essay. And so generous. You truly captured her personality, even for those of us who didn't know her.
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