5

5....it's one of those number we tend to give more weight to than others.   5, 10, 20.  For reasons I don't know, they are more significant in our minds.  Maybe because those are the denominations that money comes in, somehow lending them more importance than they really have?

I try to tell myself that it does't really matter.  That 5 is no different than 4, or 6.  But still, it weighs heavy on my heart.

Next week will be 5 years.  How can it seem like yesterday and forever all at the same time?  I can still hear her voice in my head, but it takes effort now.  I have to be still and think.  It saddens me because I know that is the beginning of losing that piece of her, that in a few more years it will escape me all together.

She was one of those friends that circumstance brings into your life.  Kids the same age (my oldest, her youngest), going to the same pre-school.  We lived in the same neighborhood and agreed that car pools were wonderful things!

She brought with her many things I had been missing in the 4 years since my son had been born.  Coffee with other "Mommy" friends, Chuck E. Cheese, story time at the library, pet sitting and Girl Scouting.  I don't know that my daughter would have had the wonderful Girl Scout experience without her.  And I'm certain I wouldn't have been the troop leader.  I can't imagine that now, missing all those times with my daughter.  Her daughter was one of my son's first "best friends".  So many memories of their childhoods weave in and out and around her. 

As I said in her eulogy, she was bald from the chemo when I met her, and all through the years of our friendship, hair never looked right on her!  She was relentlessly positive that she would overcome cancer.  Too busy creating fun and memories for her kids to dwell on an illness.

A lot has happened in 5 years.  One of her kids is now college aged and her daughter and my son have drifted apart in a high school of a couple thousand.  Would things have been different if she was still here?  I don't know.  Maybe our relationship would have changed too.  Her husband remarried and they were absorbed into a larger family with their own kids and traditions so I don't see them as much as I would like.  I pray for them and love them from a distance.  Her daughter comes by occasionally to see me and its always a welcome treat.

So maybe 5 is significant, and maybe it's not.  I don't know.  What I do know is this...

I still miss her.