The story goes that her mom brought her to our house to meet me. She was about a year old. I would have been 2. She is one of the major driving forces in my life.

“Wait, let me understand this.” With the simple statement she would slow down my rants, make me think through the explosions in my brain, make me think like a lawyer. Long before I even thought of such a thing.

She taught me how to feed a pig. She taught me about loyalty. She taught me about true friendship.

For the last 68 years, I have known that, no matter what, there was a person who was in my corner. She may not have agreed with anything I said or did, she may have, but she was ALWAYS there.

We were the kind of friends that could call each other at 3am and ask, “Are you awake?” It didn’t matter. Awake or not, we talked.

When we were in junior high (I think),we called each other almost daily. There was one phone in our house. It was on the wall in the kitchen. The cord was just long enough to go through the door to the dining room. I was lying on the floor in the dining room, phone to my ear, my mother stepping over me to finish her chores. I lay there, on the phone for hours. We talked a little. But mostly we were silent. Words weren’t necessary. We just needed to be connected. It seems like we would only hang up when one of our parents intervened with “Get off the phone, someone might be trying to call us.”

Through the years, the phone calls weren’t really necessary either. She was always there.

“Wait, let me understand this.”

It is simple.

You have been, and always shall be, MY FRIEND.