My friend died this fall. I bought a new coat.

To be clear I didn’t buy a new coat because my friend had died. The purchase was a coincidental purchase prior to the passing of this dear friend.

We had first met as freshman in college. But it wasn’t until I found myself on a double date two years later that a friendship was born.

Our boyfriends were good friends and co-workers as RAs in a campus residence hall. Later, my boyfriend and I would marry, she and her date that night would soon follow suit. Graduation and weddings followed, then travels together, and visiting each other.

They had begun their careers in Milwaukee we had traveled to Michigan where my husband entered grad school. Two years later we returned to Dairyland, and the friendship continued, grew and flourished. Homes were bought, children born and adopted, grew up and were married. She said to me at her son’s wedding “We danced at each other’s weddings, now we dance at our children’s.”

One of the last times we would be together was at the wedding of our own daughter. By then our friend was already experiencing the symptoms of the disease that would take her life. FTD, frontal temporal dementia was a cruel thief to her, her husband and their three, now adult children.

And that brings me back to that new coat.

I was trying on winter coats. I had selected one and was getting ready to purchase it when I heard an oh so familiar voice in my head. “If you size up in this coat, you will have room to grow into it.” A mantra from the distant past of my childhood . And then when I stopped growing (as children do) the message was fine tuned to “If you size up one size, you can wear a sweater under that coat on really cold days.”

That voice of course was my mother’s. And I am sure many of you reading this may remember similar sentiments from your own mother.

My mother died over 30 years ago. I was a mother myself by then. And her death separated her from me and my need to talk to her about my children. It separated me from asking her how she made those pumpkin cookies and the cole slaw that she brought to every cook out. It separated us when I still had a lot to ask her about, and oh so much more to learn about her own childhood, life during the war, time spent living abroad. Just everything.

And I of course still had so much to tell her.

So as the year slowed into autumn, my friend died. And as the holidays began I thought often of this girlfriend who shared my own zeal for Christmas and all the merriment and sparkle that the holidays can bring.

And with those memories I thought about her children. For they like me, and like everyone who has lost their mother, will now miss talking to their mother.

But perhaps (and I hope) they will still hear her.

They will hear her when they talk to their siblings and reminisce about her. They will hear her when they themselves repeat one of her favorite truths or sayings. And one day, they will be going about their day when clear as a bell their mother’s voice will be in their ear. Telling them what to do, why to do it, or how to do it better.

It may be a small detail or a big decision. But she will be there to guide them with a nudge wrapped in a whisper that they alone will hear.

And that whisper will be as warm as any winter coat.

I’m just say’n.

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