Hello, Sunshine.

I think I know how to handle the deaths of grandparents, older relatives, older people. As terrible as it is to say, it's something inevitable, but when it's someone young, taken not just passed, it's different. What I don't think I'll ever grasp is the death of a friend.

Not that grandparents or relatives are ever not terrible, but there's a special category for lost friends. It seems to be a different type of loss. Like you can expect to lose family, but friends seem to catch you off guard.

Cyndie was one of those friends, someone I never got the chance or time to get to know enough, but someone who also left an absolute gaping hole when she passed. Someone whose death made me livid at God or whatever higher power seems to be dictating things. Someone who never got enough time to live her life but brought the most lively memories to everyone she encountered.

I know how to handle black dresses, funerals, incense. But how do you handle cancer, celebrations of life, and colors instead? Especially when black seems to be the most fitting color for how you're feeling? I know when to say "Lord hear us" and "Amen". I don't know how to say goodbye to someone who should've had so much more ahead of her. I don't know how to do a "celebration of life," how to cry somewhere other than mass, somewhere other than a church, in something other than black. I don't know how to handle a loss that you knew was coming in the worst and only way possible. I especially don't know how to deal with the death of someone you saw yourself in, someone you wanted to be like, someone who you felt was like a best friend after one night of drunk karaoke.

It gets you asking horribly bitter questions about life and the equality and fairness of it all, which is never a great path to go down. But it does get you thinking. It's something anyone who knew of her diagnosis (only recently, as in the new reality of it) saw coming. Otherwise, she was a person I never pictured dying, ever. In my mind, in my heart, she was so invincible. No matter how bad, her cancer was beatable, especially because she was so full of life, so full of hope. So happy. She loved espresso martinis and Harry Potter conspiracies and decorating for every holiday. In my mind, someone that confident and full of life couldn't possibly pass away.

But she did. On a day in February, after a day alone in London, I found out she did. There was no other time in my trip that I felt so alone, but even this news, one we slowly saw coming, hurt and hit just as suddenly. The sadness I feel seems inappropriate when I compare myself to those who knew her better, longer. But mourning for the friendship and time I wish we had alongside the person she was, hurts. There's nothing I can do to change it either; no matter how impossible it seems to accept, she's physically not here anymore.

So I have to learn how to order espresso martinis on my own, to find the beauty in life, to sing and live and love just as bravely she did. To adjust and learn and grow, but never forget where it came from, who that inspiration came from.

Because as fragile as life is, it's beautiful too. It's strong and happy and powerful, and if living happily in her memory is the best I can do, I'll try to do that every day.