back on the wagon

I made this tonight. That, my friends, is a roast chicken with oranges under its skin. After blood (his), sweat (mine), & tears (also mine...did you know that chickens don't come with a giblet bag? Seriously. All their parts are intact!), this was my dinner tonight.

I fell off of the cooking wagon. I was tired of leafy greens. And I was tired of my job. And then one of my best friends died. Not much cooking has gone on in my house in the past two to three weeks.

But I decided that today was the day. Roast Chicken Day. My name is Katy, I am twenty-three years old, and I can cook a whole chicken at one time.

Kaylee's death has hit me hard.

...

I want to follow that up with some sort of profound statement, but that's all I've got. I'm shocked. I'm heartbroken. I'm angry. I'm not sure that I'll ever fully believe that she died at twenty-four of an aneurysm.

I want to make a grandiose gesture to tell the world how much she meant to me. I want to launch some sort of aneurysm awareness campaign for young women. But that's ridiculous, because the chance of her having had an aneurysm was so slim that if she'd gone to the ER with her symptoms, they probably would have thought that she had the flu or food poisoning and she would have been sent home. I want to film a documentary about this girl that never let me stop laughing. But without her, what's the point?

Those who didn't know her won't ever understand what she meant to me. She was my friend, my confidante, my partner in crime, my cheerleader. She was going to plan my bachelorette party & she was going to be an honorary aunt to my babies.

So I'm starting with the small things. Russell & I are going to give blood this weekend. He's not excited. But even if I have to bribe him, we're getting up bright & early on Saturday to save lives in memory of a girl who made me who I am today.

And I'm going to roast whole chickens & take cross-country road trips & drink in all of the sights that she never got to see. Because as small as those things are, I know that 50 years from now, or whenever God calls me, the people who love me will look back and know that those were the big things. I would give just about anything to hug her again, to hear her laugh, to listen to her make a risque joke.

Kaylee was my most sincere, most generous, most irreverent friend. And none of my words can describe how exquisite she was or how deeply I miss her.