Walking Each Other Home

The day my mom died, my husband called one of my best friends, Erin, while I was in the shower drowning my tears. I needed the softness of her. He knew. By the time I emerged from the steamy bathroom in my thread-bare robe and towel turban she was there. She simply hugged me and said, “I am so sorry.” I melted into her.

She didn’t ask me if I wanted to talk, she knew that I didn’t, knew that it was too raw. We just climbed on top of the comforter like we did in college when we were hungover or when we had failed a test or when we just needed the familiar nearness of the other. We silently stared up at the ceiling, Erin grabbed my hand and just held on. She smoothed my ragged edges and provided a space for me to shelter in place.

After a while, Erin got up but told me to just be still. She got my suitcase from the top shelf and started selecting the clothes that I would need over the next few days. When she put my favorite WVU hoodie in amongst my “funeral clothes”, tears rolled over the bridge of my nose and pooled in my ear.

As Tony put our luggage in the car, Erin hugged me, told me that she loved me and assured me that she would see me soon. When I was scared and confused, my friend walked me home.

We nicknamed Erin, with her golden hair and sunset smile, “Switzerland”. In a group of pig-headed, hot-tempered women she has an uncanny ability to stay neutral. She is our soft-place to land. It was Erin who silently willed her two best friends who hadn’t spoken for eight years back together by asking us both to be in her wedding.

And, Erin’s innate goodness seemed to be rewarded with a lovely, fairly-charmed life. Until last February. A year ago, Erin unexpectedly lost her charismatic, funny, loud, loving husband, Erik. His death makes zero sense. It is the type of thing that makes you want to stomp your feet and curse like a Hell’s Angel. It left all of us who loved him, and there are so many of us who loved him, with an infinite list of questions. None more so than Erin.

I miss Erik. I miss hearing his booming, “What up, Sosh?”. He was my buddy. We had grown up together. We vacationed together. We had some wild nights together. Erik was the one who took my very nervous husband for a walk the night we welcomed our daughter into the world; that walk is the only thing that kept me from killing said husband that night.

Although, I miss him, my life has continued to ebb and flow in a fairly normal pattern. That, of course, is not a luxury Erin has been afforded. From the mundane to the intimate, everything changed for her 52 weeks ago.

I’ve watched as my friend has navigated the past year as widow and single mom. She has done the work; the counseling, the widow’s groups, the yoga, the reconnection with her God. Yet, she is still struggling. She grows frustrated when people comment on how strong she is. She says that she doesn’t feel strong. She is. Trust me.
I see her strength when we sit beside each other in a cold, dark movie theater. When she wraps Christmas presents. When she loads the dishwasher. When she buys a new car. When she attends her daughter’s dance recitals and gymnastic classes. When she goes to a P!nk concert. When she buys her drunk, ungrateful friends cheesestraws (they’re gross). When she is the first person to text me on the anniversary of my mom’s death. When we have drinks at the Ritz before seeing Hamilton. When she goes to work. When she gets out of bed.

Our route may be longer and more difficult to navigate, but just as she has done for me, I will continue walking with my friend until she finds her way home.

Soshally Awkward

Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.