I’ve never seen her eat a Cheeto before. Come to think of it, I rarely ever saw her eat anything that wasn’t USDA certified organic. She has never turned down a glass of wine either, but she did both these things in the span of five minutes. It could have been the stress of the party or everyone's micromanaging, but for the first time I saw her eat not one, but two Cheetos, and decline the glass of Chardonnay I offered. She shook her head and said she should be drinking water because she hadn’t been hydrating enough that morning. But when she filled her glass, I only saw her take two or three sips before she was distracted by discrepancies between the tablecloths she ordered and the tablecloths she received.

In the years I’ve known her, she has always hated doing these things – planning parties, figuring out aesthetic details, hosting events, etcetera. Yet somehow she knew that the ivory colored tablecloths would look a lot better than the buttercup colored ones because the latter was “way too bright of a yellow” to complement her pastel blue decor. I watched her shuffle around the house pointing out nonexistent dirt patches on the hardwood floors, wondering why she was suddenly unrecognizable to me.

Her mom died a week ago, two hours after her 22^nd birthday. The party was planned months in advance to celebrate her graduation, which incidentally, fell on the same day. Having battled cancer for years, the one thing her mom wanted to do was to see her baby bird graduate from college; but the universe just couldn’t let her do that. Had the doctor not put her on the most aggressive form of radiation, she could have made it at least a few more months, and that’s what angered her the most.

She was at the hospital during the last two weeks of classes, so the first day I saw her was the morning of our graduation. The day after I was packing up my things and getting ready to make the drive home is when I saw her climbing the stairs to our apartment. She didn’t need to say anything; I could tell that it had happened. Maybe that’s why I see her so differently now than I did a week ago. Her mom died and I had to go home, I wasn’t there to comfort her in her initial moments of grief. But now she seemed OK, party hosting, household cleaning, Cheeto eating OK, which meant that she really wasn’t OK at all. Having lost her biological mom, she was hurled into a new phase of her life, which is why she seemed so unlike the person I knew her to be.

Our friendship thrived on the fact that we were one in the same, yet she was much wiser than me and infinitely more intelligent than most of our peers. But she was still one of us; she enjoyed bar hopping as much as she enjoyed movie nights on the couch, the only difference was that she was going to Stanford in the fall while the rest of us struggled to find jobs. As she took on tasks that she didn’t ordinarily shoulder, I saw her as someone much older than me; someone weathered by grief. But even as she grieved, she was able to present herself with energy and positivity for the sake of her guests. I watched her (chin up, smile on) greeting family with open arms. Some were vocal about it, others were not; but the general consensus was that it was a day of contrasting celebrations. For her, the eight-hour party was a blur of relatives passing through, repeated “thank yous,” and long, teary hugs. For me, it was eight hours of seeing her gradually accept the fact that she didn’t have to grieve her mother alone.

She was the more affectionate one out of the two of us, affectionate meaning she was the one to initiate hugging or anything involving physical contact. She hardly ever showed sadness outside of the topic of her mom, but when she did you could hear her voice catch in her throat as she proceeded to explain the details of her mother’s prognosis. I never cried, but she knew that I felt the same sadness she did and that was enough for her.

People spoke at the ceremony that was held at the end of the night, but I sat glued to my chair trying to hide behind a glass of flat champagne. I had a lot to say; her mother had treated me like her own daughter in the four years I knew her, but the extent of my grief was too much to put into words. My support over the years had consisted of obligatory hugs and respectful silences, but never of words of comfort. I was there when she needed me, but I couldn’t express my sadness past the involuntary looks of pity that she hated. I have been waiting for some kind of emotional catharsis ever since she told me that the cancer was back. That night I didn’t feel obligated to hug her; for once it was something that I wanted to do and my body shook as I sobbed obnoxiously into her hair. Through hiccups and violent sniffling, I promised her that I would take care of her and that I would always be there for her. Her boyfriend promised to do the same, but I needed her to know that she didn’t have to be an adult for the two of us anymore.

She was driving the Peace Mobile down a busy LA street when she shook her head at me. May was going to be the month when she had to sort out her mother’s things and in the silences between our conversations, I knew she was contemplating where to begin. I didn’t ask about it because I trusted that she would tell me when she was ready. I’ve learned that being supportive doesn’t require unnecessary talking or overstepping boundaries. She taught me that finding comfort in the silent spaces between words exchanged is something that can only be found in relationships like ours.

It’s been two months since her mom died and this time, we’ve talked about her moving in with her boyfriend at Stanford and the exciting fears that come with it. We’ve discussed how it’s all going to be different now that we will only be twenty minutes away from each other. Through the stories I’ve heard about her life since her mom’s death, I’ve realized that moving on doesn’t mean forgetting about who you have lost in your past. If two years of studying T.S. Eliot has taught me one thing, it is that from death comes life ­– a philosophy I never understood until now.