Currently late morning, Charlie Brown Christmas is playing in the background, the heat is turned high and I’m waiting for the tea to finish brewing so that I can put it into my travel mug and head out. I’m heading north for the day to say good-bye to my best-friend of half my life, Emily.

It’s not the first time we’ll say good-bye to each other. The first was around 18 when I decided with no real reason (and no knowledge) to move to some little remote ski village in the Canadian Rockies. I did not ski and I didn’t know anyone there. But I went and she saw me off. The both of us cried so much because we were so connected, spending every moment together, being goofy, knowing each other’s synchronicities. We were a unit and unsure how things would be once separated. It was the hardest thing to leave her and I cried the entire trip there. I kept asking myself why I was giving up that friendship, why was I giving up comfort, why was I giving up everything I knew for something I had no idea of?

Turns out going to that little town was the best thing that happened to me and, several months later, she joined me and it began several years of adventures for us. I’d leave her a few more times but we’d always connect. Even through the bumpy patches.

Somehow in the last several years we managed to live only 3 hours from each other and that’s been wonderful. It’s allowed for all-night talking fests whilst playing Cranium, it’s allowed her husband and mine to become great friends, too, it’s allowed me to meet her beautiful son and so forth. But, once again, I’m leaving for some town in which I have no idea about and will try for some adventure – giving up comfort, what I know and a friend.

Oh, she’ll visit and perhaps I’ll return once in awhile here to say hullo. There’s emails and postcards to send but to leave a friend is always sad. Perhaps it’s that way so that we can know the joy of seeing them again.