"How many nights did we spend on Annette's upstairs porch, watching the light fade, listening to the barking dogs in the distance? How many times did we go to the Real Food Café? And how many times did she order her toast dry, and then ask for butter? How many late nights in South Haven or Saugatuck, how many mornings at Uncommon Grounds? How many times did we deliver dinner back and forth, or maternity clothes or baby clothes or maybe-it-will-fit-you-but-it-doesn't-fit-me clothes? How many times did we walk back and forth from Paris, along Hoyt, across Madison, and over to Aurora?

Of all the things, of all the thousands of memories and snapshots of our lives together, from college to trips to weddings to the last three years in Grand Rapids, there is one thing that rises above everything else like a siren, like a smoke signal. It's this: the closer you get, the closer you get. I didn't always know how to open myself deeply. Moving to Grand Rapids, a town that was tricky for me for all sorts of reasons, and the fear and the loneliness of it, snapped my heart shut like a drum.

And then Annette and Andrew moved across the country and into our neighborhood and day by day, phone call by phone call, breakfast by breakfast, Annette taught me that the closer you get, the closer you get. That when you allow someone past all those doors you were taught to keep closed, what you find behind those doors is a kind of friendship I didn't even have a category for. I've spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won't leave, and fearing that it's a matter of time before they figure me out and go.

And every time I told Annette the truth, or asked for something difficult, or opened a scary conversation, when I thought she would back away, she walked forward. And by walking forward, she changed me, and now, everywhere I go, everywhere life takes me, I'll be looking for this, for this kind of friendship that my dear friend Annette taught me."