“All the world is grey, like you took the colors with you when you went and passed away.”
-Radical Face All Is Well, Goodbye, Goodbye

I’ll be honest I have tried to write this a million times and I have never gotten past the first sentence. I could say anything between here and the end and I don’t know what I could say that would sum up my best friend, the person that saw the real me when no one ever has. I don’t know what would make a difference in writing this, it can’t change anything. But I guess I have to try because this is all I have left are these memories locked inside my head. And it’s a shame not to share them, even if I can’t exactly explain them correctly.

Our beautiful friendship started seventeen years ago. Way before I took my first breath. I was born on July ninth two months early, my original due date was September 4th; her birthday. Maybe it was by default or maybe fate planed it this way so as each year I got older, I wouldn’t have to hate the day I gained another year and she no longer could. Either way sometimes I wonder if things had gone the way they should maybe she would still be around today.

Mini Me

I was diagnosed with Diplegia Cerebral Palsy shortly after my third Birthday. It is a form of Cerebral Palsy that mainly affects the legs, and isn’t as severe as other forms of cerebral Palsy. But like most disabilities it is one that often alienates kids who have it. I wore two braces made of plastic from my knees to my toes. I also walked with a walker and sometimes sat in a wheel chair, but mostly I walked slowly and surely.

To be honest the doctors didn’t know how far I would go, they didn’t know if I would make it. From the moment of my birth nothing was ever set in stone. I used to hate CP it made me different from other kids and I was often the kid sitting alone on the playground watching the other kids run around or jump rope.

But no matter what, Bobbie was always there for me. It was she who taught me the motto I live by: I define the Cerebral Palsy, I don’t let it define me. Even at a young age she taught me so much. “I was smart,” she always said. “A Miracle.” because I had defied the odds set against me. I was just like her, could read before I tied my shoes, had a vocabulary that went beyond my years, and saw things no one else did. We were alike and everyone knew it.

We used to spend hours in her room, and I don’t remember what about, but the conversations! To have someone understand what you mean and not treat you like a kid with a disability! With Bobbie the possibilities were always endless. She had a Godlike Complex, whatever she did she excelled at. She was immortal to my young eyes, and she knew everything, there was not a single thing she couldn’t do. And as the years grew in number, our bond was like a sister’s. She made me a better person because she knew the best parts of me and the worst. And she understood my frustration when no one else did. People called me her Mini Me because we were exactly alike brains and all.

There was this one time during Hurricane Charlie (I think) that I was sent over to my Aunt’s house to wait out the storm. I hated how the wind moaned and things kept hitting the house. I couldn’t sleep that night either because my brother had been hospitalized and I had no idea what was going on except that he was sick. So Bobbie sung the Song from Stir Crazy it’s called Down in the Valley. I don’t know why she picked that song it’s such a weird song, but I still sing it sometimes, on nights like tonight when I miss her so bad that it feels like my heart can no longer take the pain. And now I can’t even remember her voice and I would give anything to hear her call me “Little Kid” or “Miracle” again. I was Miracle when I did something amazing, like get good grades and I was “Little Kid” when I would follow her around like a puppy. Mostly I was Little Kid, a nickname I still go by sometimes by my mom or my aunt. But no matter what it isn’t the same without Bobbie because she gave it meaning.

Everything in it Pancakes

This is my first memory of us. Bobbie loved to experiment. Mainly with food, and my brother and I, her wiling (hungry) victims. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. This is a story I sometimes recall. I was three at the time, and I remember it was a Saturday such a beautiful day. Bobbie was maybe thirteen and we were both hungry at seven thirty in the morning, so we went into the kitchen my older brother in tow. Bobbie sat me in my high chair because I was too little to sit at the table. She asked us what we wanted and my brother and I said cereal.

What we got, twenty minutes, and a messy kitchen later were what Bobbie called Everything in it Pancakes. Which oddly enough did include cereal (Apple Jacks for me and Corn Flakes for my brother) There was also sprinkles, blueberries, chocolate chips, strawberries, banana’s and two kinds of strange and bizarre syrup. I will admit that I ate them, every last round circular creation. I hated them, I’ll be honest but if I could just have one more of those awful things, you wouldn’t hear me complain.

Voice Recordings.

Another strange but beautiful memory was maybe a few months later. It was around 1999 and the first Computer came out. It was about the size of a small TV all tan and took too long to boot up. But it was a computer, one to a kid meant everything as long as it could play video games. But it also came with a recording system and a microphone.

Needless to say after the Everything in it Pancake Incident, Bobbie didn’t cook again. She did however babysit. And what do three kids and a recording system do? We argue who gets to watch which cartoon on the TV in the living room.

Well two of us did.

Bobbie, however, seeing a chance to get five minutes on the computer, fiddled with the computer’s recording system, talking about who knows what. Eight minutes later, my brother and I joined her. Bobbie and my brother actually had a decent conversation and I, I sang a ballad to my therapy horse Casino and Bobbie supplied random words.
We still had that old computer in 2009 and just before my dad gave the computer away, he had the voice recordings taken off the computer files and put on a CD.

My brother and Bobbie’s conversation is saved on a CD, my ballad and Bobbie’s melody was lost forever due to some malfunction or another.

To this day I haven’t been able to listen to the recording of her and my brother. I also can’t remember what Bobbie’s voice sounds like either, like the Voice recording of my ballad and Bobbie’s, it is lost and gone forever.


Last Day:

The very last time I saw Bobbie was a day In February. Just before she went on her trip to Ohio. She had come to pick me up instead of my mom. All I remember is that she and I split this chocolate donut after she made me swear not to tell Grandma that we had eaten a donut in her car. I also remember that we talked about Him and how Bobbie was going to Ohio to see His family and His daughter. I wanted to tell her not go, and if I could travel back in time I would tell her what would happen March Sixth. But I didn’t instead I said like any nine year, “Bring me back a T-Shirt.”

She died March sixth at the age of twenty one, when the guy she was driving with was drunk and lost control of the car. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and maybe if she was maybe she would have lived.
I don’t know how to explain what it feels like to lose someone you love. It’s an indescribable feeling. I was sick the week of her funeral, the night of her wake I couldn’t stand the sight of her in her casket, the way she looked she could have been sleeping, and that’s what my other aunt told me, but I knew the difference. Because every time I called her name, or called her on the phone, she always answered even if it was the dead of night. And this time she didn’t.


It’s almost been eight years.
I have forgotten Bobbie’s voice, and maybe a dozen memories over the years. I lost my best friend and the only thing I have left of her are memories and a pink Ice Ring that I wear around my neck.

I sometimes wonder what would of happened if she never went to Ohio. I wonder if she would have married Him, and if I would have been the Flower Girl at their wedding like I was supposed to be.

I wonder a lot of things, like if we would still have been close, or if she had lived would she had been happy. I wonder if she had lived would I be able to talk about the time she locked the keys in the car at the Butterfly Museum without bursting into tears. I wonder what my life would have been if she was still in it. Life is a precious thing that has a beginning, a middle, and an end and sometimes the end is too soon.

This won’t even begin to tell you her worth to me, or that she made a difference and its okay because everything I want say, I can’t. Because there once lived a girl, who made a difference and helped me to defy the odds. And now there is only me, defying the odds without my best friend. And I know I will see her again someday, but for now I must soldier on alone with memories and tears.

Even eight years later she is still making a difference, simply because she showed me that I could be anything as long as I defied the odds. She was my best friend, and the place in my heart will always be empty because no one else can quite fill it. But that is what best friends do, make a difference even long after they are gone.