As I struggle to deal with the deaths of my father and my best friend, I have nearly lost myself. I feel the tears stripping away years of old paint and discolored lacquer. Grief has worn me down to my smallest components and forced me to build back my beauty and my true self.

My rebuilding process has made me look at myself clearly for the first time in my life. I have always been a perfectionist. I have to be the smartest, the prettiest, the most talented, the most successful, the most outgoing. I won’t even get into how enraged with jealousy I still become when I meet someone with a better record collection than I have. Thank God I have almost all the Adam Ant albums.

I have never been comfortable letting anyone see any weakness in me. No one can see me cry. No one is allowed to have any inkling that I am not as strong as I pretend to be. But grief won’t let me hide my feelings anymore. For the first time, I cannot ignore the pain in my life. I am forced to deal with it because this strange sickness is so overwhelming.

With Devon, grieving is easier, despite her death being more shocking than my father’s. She turned 20 just two weeks before a drunk driver killed her. I think, by the time she died, I was so familiar with tragedy that I could wade through any crisis with my eyes closed.

Still, I mourn the future we were supposed to have together. She said we would be best friends forever. We even bought the necklaces in junior high that proclaimed this. She was “best,” and I was “friends.” I thought this would always be true.

I promised she could be the maid of honor in my wedding. But if we were still single at 40, we said we would turn lesbian and get married. It made sense, since we already loved each other deeply.

I could never tell if she was just joking about the idea — or if she knew how serious I was.

I loved her so much.

Going to her funeral was one of the most difficult experiences of my life. I liked to imagine she was on vacation at some elegant location — that she wasn’t gone forever, just until she got a good tan. But as I stood in line waiting with old friends and forgotten classmates, I began to realize how painfully permanent Devon’s death was.

There will be no more 2 a.m. phone calls. No more sleepovers. No more “best friends forever.”

No more Devon.

It took all my strength to walk through the parlor’s doors. I wanted to run away as fast as I could. I wanted to run until she wasn’t dead anymore.
Inside, the room was crowded with so many of Devon’s family and friends I could hardly turn around. Everyone was bumping into each other in awkward silence.

It was a sea of Kleenex.

Then, through my tears, I saw my best friend in her casket. She was wearing the necklace I gave her for her 18th birthday. I never dreamed when I picked it out that this would be the last time she would wear it.

I’ve noticed at funerals that people always comment about how nice the dead person looks. This is never true. But I could tell the mortician did her very best with Devon. She curled her hair beautifully and tried to cover the damage from the wreck. She tried to make Devon look peaceful.