Dear Mitzi,

I miss you.

It's been several years since we literally spoke to each other, and that last conversation was profoundly important to me. I remember that it was a phone conversation at the beginning of February and that you were calling to talk about one of the most important people in your life about whom you were deeply concerned. Until that conversation, I don't think we had spoken in a while. At the time it felt random that you called - not because we couldn't converse, but because it didn't matter how far apart we were; we were who we were to each other and we didn't need to have words to know the value of our relationship (though I so regret that I didn't call you more). In that conversation, I remember that your words were encouraging and uplifting to me, as they always had been, even when you were scolding me as a kid. How did you do that?

But we ended that conversation with an "I love you." And that "I love you" is oxygen to me. Especially today. There are some things I need to tell you today.

First and foremost, thank you for giving me one of my best friends on the planet. Thank you for lifting me over that stupid rock fence that day, when I was four and she was three.

Thank you for being a mentor to me and for being a beautiful role model, especially in my profession. I remember that when I was looking for a teaching job I called El Paso ISD and I mentioned your name. They asked me when I could start - just. like. that. - without an interview.

Thank you for helping me to feel loved, especially when I didn't think I was worth the effort.

Thanks for letting me sneak over to your house to watch Three's Company, and when I needed to get away from the circumstance at my house.. Thanks for being a safety net. In fact you were the one who told me to go home on the night that we both knew would change my life forever. I saw that you knew. I felt like it would be OK, no matter what, just in that one glance when you told me I needed to go home. The tone of your voice and your eyes said that you knew, and that it would be OK.

Thank you for including me in your family. Thank you for kissing me like you kissed your daughters. Thanks for assuming that I would be at all of the family gatherings even though I technically wasn't family.

Thank you for making me giggle, and for getting on to me for singing "Like a Virgin" when I didn't know what that meant.

Thanks for allowing your husband to buy the clapper and for not getting on to him for clapping fifty thousand times before the TV went off at night, a circumstance that made me laugh until my insides hurt on the many occasions I spent the night at your house.

Thank you for letting me make your casket arrangement, an effort that was both healing and communal. It still is the most beautiful flower arrangement I've ever made.

Thank you for letting me hear your voice one last time at your service. And I did. I heard your voice among the choir. You knew I needed that.

You're still here with me sometimes. Thank you for that, because I still need you.

I miss you. You were an amazing human being!

I'm so, so lucky that I got to have you in my life.