Remembering

I don't know why, but the memory of a dear friend who passed away a number of years ago is especially clear. I can hear and see her laugh in my mind. She always said, "My life is never boring." She taught me a lot about faith, grace, and a love for good food. We connected on that and other topics of shared interest. She introduced me to Greek lemon chicken soup. She'd been in a car accident a decade before we met. It caused her excruciating pain, and she kept going, helping others, endeavoring to live her life as normally as the pain would allow. Some days were torturous. We would make plans to go to lunch or dinner and she or I would cancel at the last minute. Neither of us took offense. We understood that we couldn't know in advance how we'd feel on any given day. We'd re-schedule and try again. We made plans more often than we carried them out. She had a gallows humor that matched my own, and we laughed a lot. All these years later, and I still miss her.