It has been three years since she died.

I was just her friend, but she had a way that made you feel that she treasured your friendship.

I can still hear her laugh. We laughed about everything, including all the wrong things; things that you don’t dare post on Facebook. We laughed about gossip, about celebrities, about each other. We group texted during award shows. We talked politics all the time. To make her laugh at your joke was a gift.

We had a monthly supper club group. We ate at the great restaurants all over town, drank a little too much, and laughed some more. Some nights were like therapy sessions with one of the group spilling her guts about some problem, some struggle. We took turns listening and supporting each other.

Never in my ever worried mind did I imagine that her life would be cut short. I remember when the youngest sister, Lady Sybil, died on Downton Abbey. We couldn’t believe the writers would do that to us. I remember when she was comforting our friend who had lost her Mom just a few short years after losing her brother. “Sometimes life is just hard,” she said. She was so right.

She loved Kelleys Island. The lake and a house full of family. Friends dropping by. Red wine sessions after the kids went to bed. Taking friends to Dockers on a Saturday afternoon. Trips to the Bay and lunch at the Crews Nest. Kids laughing and dogs playing by a picnic table in the Winery yard. Telling stories by a campfire and making us laugh so hard you would spit out your drink. I like to picture her in a summer sundress with a sunburned nose and a Papa-T’s cone in her hand shouting hello as she crosses Division Street to go play mini-golf with the kids.

When I called her to tell her the news that a baby was born, Mark and I were about to be parents, and we might be able to bring the baby home from the hospital in a week, she came over immediately with a loaned a crib, bedding, and new parent advice. She told me the first night home from the hospital would be very hard, but we would get through it. She told me that every time you think you had the hang of parenting, something new would happen, a new stage would start, and you would start learning all over again. She was so right. The pillow sham from the bedding set she gave us became our daughter’s comfort blanket that she now calls “Binks”. My daughter sleeps with Binks every night.

Her death tore my heart. The impact on me personally still seems out of proportion to what it ought to be. Who am I to grieve? I was just a friend. I only have a right to have ancillary grief, right? But grief does not appear to know social niceties or appropriate boundaries. I am still angry and lost in the why of it. I understand mentally that this is a mystery I will never understand or get an answer to. I like to think of it this way: As a human, with just a human brain, I am too limited in my intellectual capacity to ever understand why God permitted this.

The one thought that gives me solace, and that resonates with me energetically, is that my friend must have been called to be an angel. Because of her, I have become a believer of angels, guides, and signs. A rainbow, a hummingbird, a song on the radio. I am so certain of it that it is sometimes frightening.

I can almost hear her saying, what are you all crying about? I’m the one who’s gone; you all get to live some more. Now go do it.

She was so right. YOLO.