When I was a girl, one of my favorite authors was L. M. Montgomery. I read Anne of Green Gables and all the rest of the series at least a dozen times and never got tired of it. I especially enjoyed Anne’s friendship with Diana, and I wished, too, as Anne did, for a real friend, a "really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul." I didn’t find her until I was sixteen, and then I met Chris. I swear there was a nearly-audible click when we shared names: we were instant best friends, kindred spirits. She was my one friend who I could trust absolutely, and she remains the friend I could ask to do almost anything, and if she could she’d do it. We don’t get to see each other as often as either of us would like—work and husbands and kids and mortgages get in the way. But when we do get together, we click; we’re teenagers again. Well, minus the short black skirts, big hair, and dubious activities.

Chris’s mom died when Chris was about four, and her dad was not a shining beacon of goodness (to put it mildly). So she spent a lot of time living with her grandma Avera, her mom’s mom. By the time I became friends with Chris, Avera was in her seventies. But she was the most amazing woman you can imagine. She didn’t seem hampered by her age at all, but still took care of Chris and her younger sister, took care of her yard, helped her husband take care of the horses. Looking back now, I’m not sure how she managed to be so consistently friendly and welcoming to the gang of us showing up at her house. How does a woman born in 1912 deal with four or five girls dangling suede tassels, weird crystal jewelry, and bitter attitudes? But she really was always welcoming. Even with the deep anger I lived in during that time, I responded to her kind spirit. In fact, she was the one person I was willing to dial back my intensity for. In her house, I never swore or said anything mean, and I became a little softer; hers was a home wherein I could let down my guard. I didn’t recognize it then, but I can see now: she was teaching me the value of simply loving someone, despite all their flaws, as well as the strength of kindness.

In a sort of random occurrence, when my sister-in-law Cindy began working as a nurse this spring, the assisted living center she chose was the one where Avera was living. She wasn’t ill, but just needed a little bit of help and couldn’t live on her own anymore. A few weeks ago, Kendell needed to pick something up from Cindy while she was at work, so I ran in to get it and to say hello to Avera. She was sitting in her room with a quilt on her lap, reading. My perspective about older people has become skewed to expect everyone to be like my dad, confused and silent. But not Avera. She looked up at me and immediately knew exactly who I was, even though we’d not seen each other since Collin’s blessing. We chatted for about twenty minutes, about everything from her soon-to-be-born twelfth and thirteenth great grandchildren, to Chris, to Chris’s sisters and their families. We even giggled a bit about the old days. Then she sighed. "I’m not sure why I’m struggling so hard to stay here when I am so ready to go," she said. "I am ready to go." I hugged her and told her that her family still needed her, but then I patted her hand and told her I also understood. "You’ve had a wonderful life," I said. "You’ve done so much, I understand being tired." And I knew as I patted that soft old hand that I was saying goodbye—that all the seeming-randomness that brought me to her room was a blessing and an opportunity for me to see her and to say goodbye. I suddenly remembered the last time I went to her old house in Pleasant Grove, the summer I was 18 and having this experience that was one of my life’s most painful. It was no one’s fault but mine that I was in the circumstances I was, and she very well could have been disdainful. But she wasn’t. She just hugged me and told me I would be OK and that I was stronger than I thought. Those words were a comfort to me for a long time.

So that last moment in her room at the assisted living center, while I patted her hand and filled up with the sense of goodbye, I tried to say something that would comfort her. I don’t know if they did. But I discovered this morning that I was right in my feelings of goodbye, as Avera passed away late Tuesday night. I saw her picture on the obituary page and my body responded in a very physical way, as it does in the first moments of grief: hard shaking, a pounding heart, that hot rush of tears. It took the shock of seeing Avera’s obituary to realize: Chris wasn’t my only kindred spirit. Avera was one, too. There was never any hesitation to the odd, half-formed friendship we had; if I didn’t see her for years, she still knew me and we could still start talking and giggling like we’d just seen each other yesterday. I am grateful for Avera that her spirit is able to be peaceful now, free of earthly aches, seeing her husband and the three children she lost. I hope she knows, somehow, the influence she had on me. She made me a kinder person, and I am stronger for it.