Guys Come and Go But Girlfriends Stay Forever

At church this week our Sunday School lesson was based on Friendship and what a good friend is. So I am starting a new series on this blog that I will occasionally post. I want to address the people who have been a part of my life through out the years and how their lives have added to mine.

Deciding who to start with was extremely easy. I have had one friend through the years who is the type of friend who you don’t get to see or talk to very often but the distance doesn’t seem to tamper with our friendship. We always catch up right where we were.

Emily lived in the apartment above mine during our freshman year at Snow College. She was dating Matt who was a good friend of mine and we would often chat out on the outside steps at the end of the day as Matt would drop her off at home.

The beginning of our sophomore year found Emily living above my apartment again. Matt was getting ready to leave for his mission and Emily invited me to drive up to Provo from Ephraim with her so she didn’t have to go say goodbye by herself. That event was the true beginning of our friendship.

Matt is long gone but Emily and I have stayed friends through out the years. I sat at the book at her wedding, visited her in the hospital when she gave birth to her first child, visited her when her young family was living in northern Indiana and spent countless hours talking on the phone.

Here are some of my favorite memories of Emily. Every time I hear the song, “This Kiss” by Faith Hill I think of Emily. There was a year when every time Emily and I would be in a car together that song would come on and we would sing with it. I can’t listen to that song to this day without having her come to mind. And to think of it the same applies to any song by John Denver.

I remember the countless hours of singing with her and her Legacy #10 roomies into hairbrushes and curling irons. Or getting ready for dances and concerts. Institute graduation was especially nice and I have a beautiful picture of the two of us and our dear friend Corrine in front of the tute that I kept framed in my bedroom.

I think Emily’s favorite story to tell about us is a bit more embarrassing for me, but it does make me laugh. While at college I talked Emily into taking a computer class with me. While I quite enjoyed the class it was not one of Emily’s favorites but the fact that we took it together made it a bit more enjoyable. Everyone morning I would normally meet Emily at her apartment and we would walk to the bus stop and take the bus to West Campus for the class. One morning I was feeling quite under the weather and had decided to skip classes and stay in bed. Emily talked me into going with her since she didn’t want to go by herself. I decided to go and ended up quickly regretting it. The bus ride upset my stomach so much that I ended up sitting in the hall way the entire time. We took the bus back when it was over which sent me over the top and I threw up at every tree we passed on the way back to our apartments. While I was getting sick Emily would stand at a distance and yell out, "I am so sorry!"

But the thing that makes me especially grateful to have Emily as a friend is the little things and the life lessons I have learned from her. Emily loves the smell of things and I remember sitting at her bridal shower as she smelled the various cleaning products and laundry soaps. Plus she used to always use Herbal Essence hair spray because it smelled good even though the spray didn’t hold as well. Emily is a talented performer with a beautiful singing voice. I remember listening to her practice for her voice lessons each week. Little did her teacher know that she usually liked to put off practicing until the hour before each lesson! ;o)

Hickenlooper, if you are reading this I want to say thank you. Thank you for teaching me what it means to have a loyal friend. Thanks for being the type of person I can always count on when life gets hard. Thanks for sending the beautiful flowers when I found out I was having to leave my job at East High. You have no idea what those meant to me. Thank you for always forgiving me for my many imperfections and for the many hours of laughing and crying that we have shared through the years. I know it has been over four years since we have seen each other but I know when we are blessed with the opportunity to get together we will give each other a big hug and it will seem like it was just yesterday.

I love you.