To Emily: A Tribute

Senior prom.
Emily is immediately the right of me in the deep pink.
It was a weird, wonderful day.

 

My old friend, Emily Winterstein, passed away on June 22, 2023, just shy of her twenty-fifth birthday. I found out while I was on a layover in Chicago, and I stared at the skyline thinking of all the time we spent together in and around that city. Emily was a faithful friend, a loyal (if occasionally antagonistic) sister, a devoted aunt, a cancer survivor, and a force to be reckoned with. She had the most incredible sparkling brown eyes. Few people knew how to celebrate being alive like she did. We hadn't spoken in several years when I found out she died, but the grief is still achingly present. This is my  first feeble attempt to honor both her life and the strange grief that comes with losing her after so long without speaking.

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I can’t remember the last time we talked.

That reality didn’t feel significant until a week ago, when my brother texted me that you’d left us. I sat there stunned at his incomprehensible words. I wanted to write back, “Are you sure?” Never in all my years of knowing you had I imagined a world without you, and suddenly I realized how uninterested I was in that world. The grief was dull and heavy, like a bruise in my chest.

We haven’t spoken since…early college? Like most childhood friends, we never lost touch on purpose, just sort of fizzled out until there was no speaking left. Your number is still saved in my phone. I could have texted or called. Strange that now there would be no answer. I’ve lived all these years taking your existence for granted, a fact of the world. The obituaries don’t seem real.

Despite the lack of words, I carry you with me. I’ve thought so many times this week about how often we were mistaken for sisters growing up. When we were young, people couldn’t tell us apart from behind. I loved sharing that with you. It always felt like God did it very much on purpose.

And then there was your sickness. The cancer came and you conquered it with aplomb, and I realized in that season how deeply I loved you. I would have done anything for you. Your brave living became holy ground upon which to practice my own courage.

I remember writing a piece for you that summer. I don’t remember everything it said, but I do recall that the title was “Sunshine,” because that’s what you were. What you have been all these years. I will never forget your delight in sharing every celebration and victory. To be close to you meant to be showered with extravagant joy.

Your Facebook wall is filling up with tributes, everyone saying how much of a bright spot you were. I wish we would have said it earlier. I wish it would have been enough to keep you with us. It seems like a crime to miss you now, after spending so many years not talking, not asking after you. It’s a two-way street, and I’m filled with sorrow that I didn’t do my part.

The end of your life is a sobering thing, Emily Grace. Even typing your name tightens my chest. I want to call you up for one last coffee, to recount what we’ve done all these years and laugh over all our old memories and to hear how you are. Instead, I let the writings on your Facebook wall half-answer my questions, regretting that I didn’t get to hold space for your heart again.

As your living did, your dying awakens my courage. I remember the importance of reaching out, of seeing people fully, of living bound to others in every season. I will send long overdue texts today because of you.

My story will always be inextricably enfolded into yours, and yours into mine. Your beauty, your brightness, your tenacity--they will forever be entwined with my own personality and the way I live my life. The same is true for all who knew you, and we will strive to honor it.

I miss you, old friend. I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner.