Lost in the Fire

So, I have this very good friend. Probably one of the closest, best friends I've ever had. I've shared nearly everything with this friend over the past several years. I counted myself lucky to have known this person . . . that somehow the world was better because she was born.

My friend has a wide circle of friends. She is the social butterfly. She likes to have a good time and she likes to see other people have a good time. And, oh ho the good times we've had. We've spent many a night emailing/texting/chatting. We call each other when times are hard. We have listened and cried and laughed together. We have intuitively known when the other needed a shoulder or a laugh.

I watched my friend grow up. I got to see her move from being an unsteady but curious young adult to a confident woman to a mother. I was one of the people she called within the first hours of her child's life.

I worried about and for her when she went through a depression last year. I breathed a sigh of relief when she started to return from those dark days. I encouraged her healing. When she found strength in yoga, I started practicing so that I would understand. When she had illness in her family, I read about it so that I'd know understand better what she was facing.

Recently, she told me of a friend of hers who had gone through a bad break up. Her friend referred the personal items that got left behind in the hasty move-out as things that "got lost in the fire."

It is the perfect description of those once cherished items that you suddenly can live without because of changed circumstances.

Today, I was lost in the fire.