Love the Living, episode II: With a Little Help From the Dead

Two years ago this week, someone I knew casually--an acquaintance, my brother-in-law's friend who I'd say hi to in passing, but that's about it--very unexpectedly and quickly became one of my closest friends. Circumstances threw us together at the pub one night and left us to keep each other company while our mutual friends got drunk and played darts. Within two months, Chip and I had crammed each other full of our life stories and were stuck with each other.

The funny thing about becoming such close friends so quickly is that we didn't really have a chance to get used to all the idiosyncrasies that a life-long friend just recognizes as part of you and doesn't think twice about. One of mine is that I talk to Dottie, my grandmother, a habit that wouldn't be strange at all if she was still alive. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any kind of denial or suffering from delusions; it's just that she was funny as hell, had something to say about everything, and there are just times when I can almost hear her voice because I know exactly what she'd say right then, and before I know what I'm doing, I respond. (A favorite Dottie-ism from everyone who knew her was "That's funny (or any other adjective) enough to knock a buzzard off a shitwagon," and I catch myself thinking it and having to work hard to suppress the giggles.)

One night, we were standing in his kitchen, baking a cake, and I couldn't find a pair of scissors to open a package of some ingredient and was about to just bite a hole in the top. At that moment, I heard Dottie in my head, "not your God-given teeth! Why the hell did you put up with those braces if you're just gonna screw 'em up again." "I know, I know," I sighed--out loud. For a moment, I panicked. Did I just talk out loud to my dead grandmother in front of a New Guy? Yup, I did. While I freaked out for a decade, only a fraction of a second had actually passed before Chip, without looking up from the recipe, reached in a drawer, handed me a knife, and blandly said, "listen to your Gram."

By now, we've been through ups and downs a-plenty, but even on the downs, I know we'll get through it because from the beginning, I've had this friend who really accepts who I am without judging me--though he reserves the right to joke me or immortalize my blunders in a story. At least he's fair; I get the same right, if he doesn't beat me to it since he has far better luck getting published than I do!

It's exactly this kind of no-holds-barred friendship that I've realized really gives my life its substance as I've been going through this whole "how did I get here" phase. There have been lots of times when I've felt life has dealt me a really unfair hand without an option to fold. Now, though, I'm focusing on these wild cards I've been given that make up for some of the bad deals. Nothing can undo Dottie's death, but yet, she still helped me realize the kind of rare friend I'd found in Chip, who in turn breathes a little life into her by getting to know her through me.

I am the luckiest purple-haired girl in the world.