How To Be A Best Friend

We met up in the hotel lobby.

“Oh no! I left my mask in the car,” she said with a frenetic but fun urgency I always associated with her.

We hugged anyway. It wasn’t much of a risk, both of us triple-vaccinated. She couldn’t see the grin beneath my mask. But she beamed like a spotlight.

Diane and I were best friends in high school but hadn’t seen each other often since. I left Minneapolis weeks after graduation. She stayed in the area and worked at a furniture store, helping people turn houses into homes with her eye for design. Before the days of social media, it took more effort to remain in touch. We were both bad at it.

“Where should we go,” she asked excitedly, as though we might suddenly decide on a spontaneous trip to Tahiti.

“The mall?”

She laughed. Diane laughed a lot.

She always struck me as electric, a sparking live wire that might, on occasion, give you a sharp shock which you probably deserved.

It had been years since either of us had been inside the cathedral of consumerism that was the Mall of America but its temperate climate in January in Minnesota was as tempting as forbidden fruit.

We bit.

I don’t remember what we saw in shop windows, or what we ate for lunch, only that we talked. A lot. We talked about friends, family, faith — or lack thereof — joys and worries, you know, life and other stuff. I’d lived overseas for three-plus years, married, had two kids, and a job in journalism. Diane remained single, had no kids, nurtured several rescue animals, and absolutely adored her older brother’s in-laws who, she said, welcomed her and her entire family into their fold. She was so genuinely happy in life.

When the day warmed up, we drove nearby to a spot on the Minnesota River. So many of my childhood winter memories are of feeling miserably cold. Once I suffered frostbite ice-skating in too-thin socks and for years afterward every time my feet got cold, my toes burned and blistered. I told Diane I’d almost forgotten winter could be beautiful. The trees cradled blankets of white in their bare branches. In the shadows of the woods, the snow took on a bluish tint I’ve always thought looked holy. We startled a cardinal and oohed at its flash of red against a turquoise sky.

“I love these days,” said Diane.

Diane asked if I’d mind dropping by the nearby cemetery where her parents were buried.

“I like cemeteries but some people think they’re morbid,” she said. “They don’t want to think about death.”

“If you aren’t thinking about it at our age,” I said, “you are in denial.”

We’d already lost several friends. There had been illness and accidents, suicides, and substance abuse. We recognized our good luck in surviving this far.

We took risks at teens, some of them stupid. I thought of us as partners in madcap capers, back then, eager to experience all life had to offer. Time on earth, however long it lasted, was relatively brief. In youth we were fiery, burning through life like it was rocket fuel. Growing up required busyness, thinking ahead, planning for a future that was not promised. We’d both done well at it. But with old age came the return, quieter this time, of that desire to recognize the moment, to feel and appreciate it fully.

Inside the gates of Fort Snelling, Diane drove as close as she could to her parents’ spot, then we trudged through the unmarred snow. Suddenly, Diane took off in leaps and bounds like a long-legged gazelle.

“Hi, Mommy! Hi Daddy,” she squealed then dropped to the ground and promptly made a snow angel.

I laughed so hard my eyes watered.

Then I did what any self-respecting friend would do in the age of social media, I took pictures.

Still on the ground, Diane asked, “Is your brother buried around here?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Let’s find him!”

A lot of people have died since Fort Snelling was established in 1820. It’s not like we were going to stumble upon the right tombstone among the 250,000. I resisted. Diane persisted. I pulled out my phone to find my brother’s plot number on the cemetery website. We drove to the general area, then walked several minutes among the headstones on our search. The ascending numbers suddenly stopped. The numbers on the rows behind and in front didn’t seem to make sense. Once we realized the numbers switchbacked like a steep mountain trail, we walked on. And there he was.

My brother was killed in Vietnam in 1970. He was 19. I was 13. What I most remember about his burial was standing with siblings and parents, all of us shivering and crying, and looking out across the seemingly endless rows of identical headstones. The graveyard attached to our church and grade school had beautiful decorative markers carved with angels and lambs and saints. I hated the anonymity of this cemetery.

“Make a snow angel,” Diane said.

“I don’t feel like it,” I said.

“Come on,” she said.

“No.”

“You’re wearing a hat.”

“So?”

“I did it without a hat. My hair got all snowy.”

“You could have put up your hood,” I said.

“Make a snow angel for your brother,” she said and grabbed my phone to document. Even though I suspected she simply wanted proof she wasn’t the only kook around, I obliged.

The weather turned then, suddenly and severely, just as predicted. Clouds moved in. The temperature dropped. We left to beat the dark, said our goodbyes, and texted promises to get together in the future.

Me: So happy to have you as a friend.

Diane: Ditto . . . it was a great day . . . It was so fun to have my friend to play with.

Send me pics of your snow angels — whenever.

A week later, Diane’s sister-in-law grew concerned when she hadn’t heard from her for a few days, Diane was found in her condo, dead of natural causes.

I’m grateful we shared a rare day together. I’m even more grateful that we recognized in the moment, as we first had as adventurous teens, that life is brief and spectacular.

Make snow angels.