Lily Potter was my best friend. She was all the things I’m not, and so many of the things I am. She’s woven through every fiber of my being – the things I say, the things I do… all of them are influenced by having known her.
She was the best friend a person could hope for. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll start at the beginning.
I was 23. And pregnant. And unmarried. I was visiting a friend in Sacramento, when I got that weird random message from Ken (you can read about that and him in another post). He had seen me in town and wanted to meet up for coffee.
I was sitting at the coffee shop (our old hunting grounds), when he walked up… with another woman. Damn. I must have misunderstood. I guess it was time to meet his girlfriend. His pregnant girlfriend.
We quickly cleared that up – she wasn’t his girlfriend, but his best friend from junior high. She had fallen on hard times; her husband left her when he found out she was pregnant. What a jerk!!
But suddenly, there was this common ground. Both of us pregnant, single, and too young to have any clue what was hurtling toward us at the pace of life. We quickly became inseparable. She found out I had been living in my car and decided I was going to live with her. Yes, she decided. Lily was like that – she knew what was best for you and didn’t take no for an answer.
From that point forward, we were inseparable. We were best friends for 13 years. We fed off of each other’s pregnancy cravings. Her daughter slept peacefully only when laid across my pregnant belly. We raised our kids together. We alternated babysitting duties so we could all go out and have fun. We cried together. We laughed together. She was there in the hospital when my son was born. She was there when my husband broke his face. She moved to Washington, so we followed suit a couple years later. I was there when she went to chemo. And when the cancer took her.
And my life has never been the same.
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