Greetings, squadlings.

2020 sucks.

On April 23rd, my Aunt Meg died. We all remember this. However, because 2020 is a massive dumpster fire, October came with a vengeance: On October 1st, my best friend Katie’s mom, Allison, had a stroke.

My first reaction was to immediately tell her I was on my way to her house, two and a half hours away. Joke’s on me: there’s a pandemic.

Allison miraculously survived her stroke, but there’s a long road of recovery ahead. I’m not going to dive into details for her own privacy.

Grief is a weird thing, and it hits people a lot of different ways. Right now, I would say Katie is at the same stage I was at in the first few weeks after Aunt Meg died: random bursts of crying and feeling hopeless. It took me a long time to leave that stage. I really hope it doesn’t take Katie as long.

That being said, my grieving for Aunt Meg’s death isn’t over. You don’t just wake up one day and everything is fine. It’s a process, and it’s far from over. Halloween is going to be a rough one: when I was a kid, we spent every Halloween at Aunt Meg’s house, showing off our costumes and scoring the good candy from Aunt Meg’s friendly neighbors. Even though I haven’t gone trick-or-treating in years, it’s going to be a weird Halloween when those memories come back.

For a long time, I was grieving alone. It was a feeling I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Now, my best friend is going through the exact same feeling–and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m two-and-a-half hours away, and all I can do is sit back and watch as Katie, her wonderful boyfriend Anthony, and their two dogs navigate their new normal and figure out where the future is headed. They have to figure out what’s next for Katie’s mom, too–Katie is now in charge of her mom’s medical decisions. To make matters harder, Katie’s mom is deaf. She can’t communicate with her voice, or with Sign Language. Katie is going into this without any input from her mom: she’s on her own.

Katie’s mom is an incredible woman. She’s so kind, so welcoming, she treats everyone as if they are her own. My mom said it best: “to know Katie’s mom is to love her”. I would’ve failed all of my Sign Language classes in college had Katie’s mom not Skyped me once a week to tutor me. I’m heartbroken.

Aside from grieving for Aunt Meg, now I’m grieving not only for Katie’s mom, but for Katie. Katie, my best friend of twelve years. Katie, the sweetest, funniest, most perfect, most beautiful, kindest soul I’ve ever known. Katie and I have been through a lot, but I’ve never seen her like this. She’s so strong, I don’t know how she does it. But there’s one thing I know for sure:

I’m with her every step of the way, no matter what it takes.

Be well, squadlings.