Friends.

Got in touch with my old friend from Austin. He's going to become an Episcopal priest! Funnily enough, he's moving to England to finish his studies at Oxford, and this summer he'll be living in Paris so we'll be seeing each other very soon! After so many years...

Have been thinking of friends a lot this year as I am largely alone in France when my fiancé is at work. I skype, chat, call my friends in the States and England, but it's not quite the same as meeting up with them in person for dinner or a pint or a nice walk and some shopping. Not the same at all. And it's hard to make friends with French people. It's a totally different dynamic.

Then I think of friends who are lost or died this year. One friend is in terrible grief because her mother died, and I don't know how to help her or if I should. She's shut in on herself and she's an ocean and half a continent away in Austin. I've called, sent letters and e-mails. Just to let her know she's always in my thoughts and to contact me when she feels ready to deal with the world again. I know exactly how she feels. The relationship she had with her mother was very similar to the one I had with mine. Truly best friends. Maybe that's why I don't want her to be alone. I want her to know that I understand what she's going through. I'll have to be patient, I suppose. But I hope she knows that the bridge between us will never burn.

I also think of a man named Mac also in Austin. I hung out with him a few times, used to house sit for his bassist, but I knew his wife better. She was killed in a car accident last year, and I have not been able to express to him personally how much she will be missed in my life. I signed the guest book. She was honestly one of the sweetest souls I have ever known. I'll never forget a random phone call I received from her one afternoon. She said, "Rachel, I know what you need! You need a Corgi! You're a Corgi person!" I was dead set on this Irish Wolfhound/Great Pyrenées mix rescue dog that I was going to save from the needle. When the papers didn't go through for the rescue, I was really sad. Mysteriously, I received a call from someone who wanted me to come pick up a "pet class" Pembroke Welsh Corgi puppy near Dallas. Kim's call and that one were totally unrelated...or were they? I got the very best Corgi in the world, Chester the Wonder Corgi, and I'll always wonder. Kim seemed to have this sort of happy magical effect on my life, she would say something and then through another channel, it would just happen. We were always going to set a play date for Chester and her Springer Spaniels. It never materialized, we lost touch, I moved away. I cried a lot when I got the news of her passing. The loss of such a wonderful person, even if they haven't cured an epidemic or anything like that, is still a big loss. We need more people like her in the world. So it's up to us to let ourselves be influenced by her humanity. She was an inspiration to me to face the world with love instead of fear. She was kindness incarnate.