It's been several years now, but sometimes I remember it like it was yesterday. The call I got from my best friend early that Sunday morning was too early to be a "hey what's up, let's hang out" kind of call. Her voice was calm, she spoke her words slowly, and something in her tone was bracing me to hear something bad, but there's nothing that could have fully prepared me to hear her words. Our friend had died the day before in an unthinkable tragedy.

The death of a loved one is never an easy thing to hear about. But when you're a teenager, you think you are invincible. You think you have all the time in the world because you're young. You're confident that all the friends you have will be around for all the big milestones in your life that are lightyears away. When you're in high school, and you're with your friends at lunch or a dance or a football game, whether or not you'll ever see them again is the last thing on your mind. And that's how it should be.

I thought I knew everything about the world, until the day I got that call. I stopped taking every minute for granted. I started hugging my friends tighter. At 14 years old, I had to learn to grieve the loss of someone who was literally just days older than me. I had to go back to school that Monday and walk through the same doors that I had walked out with her just three days prior. I went to a memorial service and looked at a jar that held the ashes of my friend. Ashes that had been a living, breathing, lively, loud, wild spirit just a week before. That spirit had been present in my life for two years as my dance partner, one of the best people to laugh with, and she was the person who taught me to love my last name.

I miss her every day. It is over a decade later, and as an adult, I am well aware now how most friendships from your school days don't tend to last past high school graduation, or maybe the year after. But I didn't even get graduation with her, or proms, or any of it. I got some classes and lunches and dances and lots of laughs, but it's just never going to be enough. At 14, no matter what you've done with your life, there's still so much more to be had, and it's far too soon to cut it short.

Everything is temporary, nothing is guaranteed. Hold your loved ones close and cherish every moment you get.

"Grief only exists where love lived first."