Top Ten Things I Learned from Kathy

1. It’s okay to call God Gertrude and to come to the glorious, scandalous, liberating, unCatholic realization that God might be a woman.

2. It’s possible to have someone in your life who listens with her heart and her brain and who teaches you to let ideas bounce around in your head like they’re on a ride at a carnival.

3. You gotta read the label because it’s tricky.

4. When someone’s grass needs to be mowed, it might be because they can’t afford to pay someone to do it and they only have one leg, so they can’t do it themselves.

5. It’s satisfying to pick exactly the right words to describe a situation and use all of them, rapidly.

6. Pain feels easier when you’re not alone with it but sometimes even then, it’s just not enough.

7. If you buy an overpriced off-season avocado and then don’t eat it because it was such an extravagance that you want to save it, and then it rots and you realize you’ve been foolish on many, many levels, there’s at least one person who will understand and will laugh about it with you for years, and then the two of you will have a private, shorthand language where you can just say “avocado” and the other one gets it, and then you understand that your foolish purchase is actually a priceless treasure.

8. Nothing in all of life is better than a competent, beautiful, smart, kind, loving daughter like Kathy’s J or my L. Kathy loved my kid and I love hers.

9. Raisins are not actually a diet food.

10. Telling someone you like her shoes can kick off a 30-year friendship and I’m eternally grateful I wore killer shoes the day I met Kathy. She will live on in my heart forever, my personal definition of unconditional love and acceptance, the embodiment of friendship, a legacy of love.

Thank you, sweet friend, til we meet again.