Girlfriend in a coma

Some things can shape a girl while she's growing up. The child bride-like business of Catholic first communion, seeing the World According to Garp at 10 years old, Robert Smith, breakdancing, and all the strange crushes and loves from a faraway time.

I've set my sights on some doozies, to varying degrees of reciprocation. One of them was ripped apart by a car one rain-slicked night like so many brutal movie scenes. Another was gunned down outside a Vancouver restaurant by a rival gang member (I can't make this shit up). Yet another was with me one week and then without a word, the next week was married to someone else in a fairy-tale, sleigh-ride, winter wonderland wedding in Montreal that must have been in the works for months. I'll say no more about these dudes, other than they tortured my girl heart for a brief but hideous time.

But fuck if they didn't bring me to Pete - my Englishman mowing the lawn in his rubber boots - to make it all worth it.

Then there's the person who was my best friend a lifetime ago. Things fell apart after a ton of history but a rather lazy ending. This boy shaped my young girl's heart for the good and bad, but there was never a proper capper. So there. That's why things are the way they are. See you later. It's been... well, something.

Fast forward to cancer girl, planning her funeral last year for shits and giggles, and thinking, "I should invite that boy, but where the hell is he now?" Nada. No record. Doesn't exist. Put the relationship back into its little coma.

Then enter the magic of the intertubes. More than 15 years after we last spoke, he finds my blog, finds me, and sends me this eulogy-like email that makes me hear Ave Maria when I finish it. Like someone took my 22-year old self with all her unresolved angst and said, "it'll all turn out okay, sweetheart" and was actually right about that.

Sometimes this cancer crap reaches around and pats you on the head in a really nice, but rather Peggy-Sue-Got-Married kind of way.

Thank you, DC.