10 Things & Then I'll Go

Losing Paige

My best friend Paige passed away today.

She was one of those friends I've had since the beginning. I can't remember a day when she wasn't around. We met during Vacation Bible School when I was a kid during a Frisbee tournament. When one of the older boys pushed me down I looked up and she was there, hand extended to me with the sun shining behind her face creating a halo around her strawberry blonde hair. "I got ya, Natalie," she grinned. How she knew my name, I couldn't tell you, but she did and I felt so happy knowing someone was there looking out for me. As we walked away hand-in-hand she kicked Perry Sanders in the shin, making him cry.

Paige was the friend who took me out of my comfort zone. In middle school, she would volunteer the two of us for school plays. In high school, she would refuse to go on a date if the guy couldn't find a friend to take me along with them. Every Halloween she bought us coordinating costumes and when we were in college we rushed the same sorority together. She convinced me to fly to Europe with her after our college graduation and made certain I kissed at least one nice Frenchman before we got on the plane back to America.

Needless to say, my life would have been ridiculously boring if she hadn't picked me up that day, nearly fifteen years ago.

Where I was reserved, Paige was obnoxiously loud. She lived life to the fullest and even when she was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer at the age of 28 she refused to go quietly into the night. While everyone began to grieve her impending death, Paige flew to Red Rocks to see her favorite band play because it was something she always wanted to do.

When someone close to you finds out they don't have much longer to live, you have the choice to either ostracize them because it's too awkward (for you) to watch them die. Or you face the diagnosis head-on with them and fight it to the end. There was never a question in my mind to support Paige during her chemo and radiation treatments. I knew all too well what death looked like and it didn't scare me. My father passed away when I was in elementary school from pancreatic cancer and one of the only things I remember from the entire ordeal was Paige. She never left my side during his funeral and slept at my house for a week after because she knew I needed her.

Despite the grim diagnosis and the grueling rounds of chemo, Paige stayed true to herself and never lost her independence. She refused help and it wasn't until the very end when a home health nurse was called in, that she agreed to let anyone assist her in daily routine.

She succumbed to the disease peacefully, with her family and me by her side.

Funerals are not for the deceased, they are definitely for those left behind. What makes me especially angry are the spectators who show up and act as if they knew who Paige was and cry into their tattered Kleenex as a slide show of pictures is displayed on the stage of the church.

At her parent's home after the graveside service, I focused on re-heating the casseroles, slicing cake and pie and set out the drinks for everyone to consume

"Natalie, you're doing too much," Marybelle, Paige's mother said. She came up behind me in her kitchen and stroked my back, the way she always does, and I turn into her embrace.

"I just want to get all of this out and then I'll sit," I kiss the top of her head and remove the cellophane from a giant bowl of potato salad. Finding a serving spoon, I wedged it inside the congealed side dish and carry it onto the buffet table in the dining room.

Paige's dad, Mr. Sam, as I always called him, sat in the living room with Pastor John and smiled at me as I rearranged serving dishes to make room for the remaining food to bring out.

"You know, she was a strong young woman. She never married, though." That was Eleanor, First Baptist Church's resident busybody who I remember from my childhood. The woman said whatever came to mind without regard to anyone's feelings and stuck her nose into everyone else's business for decades. Her reign of terror ended today.

"You know," I said, mimicking Eleanor's sickening sweet country drawl. "It is the 21st century and us strong, young women don't need a man to define us. Not like you, Miss Eleanor." I snatched her empty plate out of her hands and exited back to the kitchen leaving Eleanor's gaping jaw and bugged out eyes boring holes into my back.

The crowd started to thin out around nine o'clock and I sent Paige's parents to bed while I cleaned their kitchen. Once the last dish was scrubbed and their refrigerator looked completely organized, I surveyed the kitchen I had grown to consider my own and turned out the lights in the entire downstairs floor. I considered leaving but the soft glow from the hallway of the second floor called to me so I slowly ascended the stairs and made my way to Paige's old bedroom.

Her parent's left the room the same since she went to college. I took in her old bedroom with such a strong sense of nostalgia, it literally took my breath away. Sometimes you never know what you mean to someone until they're gone. Looking around Paige's bedroom and seeing pictures of us, cards I had given her, made our friendship so real that in that moment I sobbed into my hands and shook with grief.

Paige used to make scrapbooks for everything. Noting a large, hot pink book on the bottom shelf of her bookcase, I lugged it over to her bed and laid on my side as I flipped through it. It was a book of our friendship during high school. Sadie Hawkins dances, Homecomings, and Proms. Pep rallies, football games, and basketball games. Pages and pages of photos, newspaper clippings, pressed corsages and notes we passed in class. It was all here before my eyes and it gave me a very personal inside look at how she viewed our friendship. We never had to profess our love for each other and if we ever fought we couldn't sleep until we made up. I knew without a doubt that if I needed Paige she would be there for me. She was the first person I called after every major life event. We would cry together after a breakup and have dance parties and eat tubs of Ben and Jerry's ice cream until we felt sick to our stomachs.

After I looked through every scrapbook she ever made, I pulled back her cheetah print comforter, we picked out together at Target our sophomore year of high school and cried myself to sleep.

The following morning I woke to the smell of bacon and pancakes. Paige's mom made a huge spread and we looked over my favorite scrapbook, grades six through eight, and we reminisced about all of the good times we had with her precious daughter.

"Take it," Marybelle pushed the scrapbook towards me. "Paige would've wanted you to have it. You were a sister to her, you know?"

Tears blurred my vision as I traced the hearts and stars on the cover of the album.

"But she was your daughter," I choked. "I can't possibly take this."

"Natalie, I have so many things to keep but you're in this." She stabbed the scrapbook with her index finger and gave me a stern look. "These are your memories and I'd like to think Paige made all of these for you."

I held the scrapbook to my chest and breathed in the pages. The book smelled old. Dried glue and markers made me picture Paige's constant attention to detail. I could see sitting at the desk in her bedroom, her shoulders hunched over and her brow furrowed in concentration. Knowing she spent hours with these pages forced me to cling harder to them and I didn't want to let it go.

"Take the rest of them and anything else you'd like," Mr. Sam said as Marybelle nodded in agreement.

"Thank you," I couldn't stop rubbing Paige's book. Every groove in the cover, the ridges of the spiral binding it together, fascinated me. I couldn't stop staring at it to address her parents properly.

"We're going to clean out her condo this week," Marybelle said. "I know you have a key so if there's anything of yours left over there, or anything else you'd like just help yourself."

"I'll be in touch," I said lamely. "Let me know if you guys need anything. I don't want you to feel like you have to take care of it all by yourselves."

Mr. Sam leaned into my side and wrapped me in his big, burly arms. "Don't be a stranger," his voice broke as he kissed my temple.

I filled my arms with Paige's scrapbooks and Marybelle followed me to my car with a bag full of mementos that were special to me.

When I returned to my apartment I placed the bag of knick-knacks on my dining table to rummage through later. I cleared out my bookshelf that stood in my living room and organized each of her books, thirteen in total, by year. Sitting on the floor in front of Paige's books, seeing her beautiful face smiling back at me in a frame situated on the top shelf, I thought of her for the rest of the day and wondered how exciting my life will be now that she's gone.