This past weekend, I attended the funeral for one of my best friends.
That’s a tough sentence to read. It was even tougher to write. And the physical act of saying goodbye was heartbreaking. Bre and I didn’t know each other our whole lives…in fact, we became friends just over a year from the end of hers, but that doesn’t really matter. She loved everyone, and saw the best in everyone. She sought me out as a friend, despite the battle that she was facing, and was relentless in her pursuit of that friendship. I remember the first time that we hung out, she was asking me all about my life, my family, my friends, my love life, my job, my hobbies, everything. She just wanted to get to know me, and she cared. And while I was sitting there babbling on about my life, I kept thinking to myself “this girl has cancer, and all she wants to do is be my friend”. She didn’t talk about her cancer much, and I wasn’t going to force her to. Instead, I got to know this girl that was more than the cancer she was fighting. I got to learn about her love of photography [a quality we both shared], her love for music [shared that as well], her love for sushi and whiskey [shared that], her time in California, her friends, her family, and her heart for Jesus [another shared quality]. It was an instant and fast friendship.
I knew that she was someone I genuinely wanted to be around. Her heart for others was inspiring. I can’t imagine going through what she was going through at 27, and still putting LITERALLY everyone before myself. It wasn’t long after our friendship began that Lindsay and Bre got introduced, and it’s no surprise that it happened at our favorite little place, Quigley’s. Quigley’s became the homestead for many of our hangouts and get-togethers. This is likely due to the Men’s Chorus of DuPage that would go there on Tuesday nights, and serenade the entire bar. When they found out that we sang, we all became honorary members. One of my favorite memories of Bre, has recently become the night that she met the guys, and they sang a song to her, and all she could do was smile and laugh. And her laugh was infectious. Once she started, it was hard for her to stop…but it was ok, because you didn’t want her too. It was an amazing laugh.
One night, I had been having a rough day…or days, so Bre and Lindsay declared a girls night with music, and drinks. Bre picked up her guitar, and we all started singing. Not only did we decide to do it that night, but we wanted to do this all the time. We thought it’d be fun to start singing together. We created a playlist of songs to sing together, and Bre titled it “2 Blondes and a Ginger Angel.” That’s what she called me. Her ginger angel. That or Al Pal. That night before Lindsay and I left, Bre grabbed a piece of paper, and wrote the words “Dear Ginger Angel, we love you to the moon.” She drew a heart on it, they both wrote their initials, I wrote mine, and that is how “To the Moon” was founded. Over the summer when Bre had the first surgery on her brain, we decided to get “to the moon” in Bre’s handwriting, as tattoos. Of course, we wanted to include Bre. She loved the idea, and insisted that she was going to talk to her oncologist about it the very next day. Sadly, he couldn’t sign off on it. We were still hopeful though that it would happen one day.
In September, I had made the decision to move home. I went to Bre’s one day to catch up on things, and so I could break the news to her about my decision. She was so excited for me. She knew that my heart was in St. Louis, and that that was where I needed to be. She even sat down with me, and helped me pick out apartments. She was sad to see me leaving, but she knew that’s where God wanted me, and that the distance wouldn’t affect our friendship.
I moved in October, we had text each other a time or two; one of the times being after she had gotten released from the hospital. So when I went up at the beginning of November, there was no way I was going to NOT see her. When I got there she was just waking up from a nap, so she was a little loopy, but that may have been the most we have ever laughed together. She wrote me a song---a parody of “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith. I have it recorded, and it is by far one of my most treasured pieces of media now. I told her about the apartment that I chose, and she was quick to remind me that it was the one that she liked the most. I told her about my job, and we just goofed off, and laughed some more. This was my favorite day with Bre. This was also the last day I would see her.
Over the year that I knew Bre, I grew incredibly close to her. It was many nights of laughter, many nights of listening to her perform with Grateful Gary and the Magic Bus [those guys adored her—for obvious reasons], and many nights of prayer, hope, and encouragement while sitting around a hospital bed. She became one of my best friends. I love tattoos, but I don’t get tattoos for just anyone. But on Friday, the morning of Bre’s visitation, Lindsay and I went and did what we had hoped to do with Bre. We got “to the moon” in Bre’s beautiful handwriting tattooed on us so that a part of her is always with us.
I miss her. She fought a good fight, and if anyone was going to beat it, it was going to be Bre. Her resiliency was inspiring, and her love for others made her a one-of-a-kind human. I think that’s why God called her home. She was an angel among us, and she didn’t deserve to suffer anymore. Her heart had such a capacity to love others and to show His love, and the legacy she has left here will never be forgotten. I love you, Breanna Jean! To the moon!
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| mine:also mine:lindsay's |
