In my blog you will find many references to my best friend Michelle, but I haven’t ever just sat down and written about our friendship, so I’d like to remedy that here. I wish I could write something poetic, or a narrative style volume of our friendship, but thinking about her is still painful, so I’m afraid this won’t be my most well-written post.

I met Michelle for the first time in my freshman geography class in 9th grade, but we didn’t become close until our senior year of high school. In 9th grade Michelle was just another popular girl who didn’t pay much attention to me. I sat near her in class, listened to her talk to her cool friends and mainly I just tried not to say anything stupid in her presence.

Michelle and I sort of knew each other peripherally, we traveled in some overlapping circles. We were both in choir and she was close with some of the same people I was close with, we even ended up at the same small sleep over once, but we just never really sat and talked together except in passing.

Senior year in high school we had every single class together, like literally every one, but the real kicker was P.E.

Michelle had been in basketball for two years and I had been in track for two, but neither of us had enough physical education credits to graduate, so there we were, seniors, stuck in a P.E. class with a bunch of Freshmen. Oh the injustice! I had also joined the newspaper staff, and she was one of the editors along with our other friend, Jennifer.

In addition to that, she and I were dating a pair of brothers, so we often went on double dates or found ourselves at the same family functions.

By senior year, popularity differences weren’t as important as they had been, and she and I were able to bridge the social gap and became close friends. She blended really seamlessly into my friend group. Honestly she was just like that – she was really easy to like. She was also beautiful, funny and smart, (in case you wondered why she was popular). She wasn’t a Regina George kind of popular, she was a genuine, guileless, fun and interesting kind of popular. I was never able to be like that in high school because I was still very much in my mask-wearing, social-chameleon phase. Michelle just gave off this air of authority and confidence without being rude or hateful. Being around her was easy, relaxing and that helped bring my guard down.

That year I had major “senior-itus” and did the bare minimum required of me to graduate and get into college. I don’t recommend it. Michelle had it too, but still managed to scrape out a good score on the SAT. We spent a lot of weekends acting like idiots and just basically having a ball.

Spring break Senior year we all told our parents we were going on vacation with each other’s families, and instead we drove to Corpus Christi with Kristen, Jennifer and Eva. There was much Tom-foolery.

After high school I went to the University of Texas and Michelle went to Sam Houston State University. We sent each other many forlorn emails being sad we weren’t closer to each other, and we visited each other often.

Freshman year of college we both broke up with our high school boyfriends and met the men who would eventually become our husbands.

I encouraged her to come to UT, and in a massive show of faith, she left SHSU and enrolled in Austin Community College in hopes of transferring to UT. She wasn’t at school with me, but she was in Austin. Success! We roomed together with another close friend and our friendship deepened.

In college Michelle buckled down like no other and I saw a side of her I hadn’t seen before; a very responsible, accountable, fastidious side. She earned a master’s degree in the same amount of time it took me to earn a bachelor’s degree. She was on the dean’s list and graduated with honors. She did her practicum at CARD school and worked extensively with autistic children.

Our husbands became friends, and we did a lot of the same stuff most people do. We went on vacations together, were in each others weddings, present at the births of each others first children, and Michelle was my oldest daughter’s godmother. Barrett’s friends became our friends, and it was generally a big, happy, fun group.

After college, Michelle’s heart just wasn’t in child psychology or special education, but in teaching, so she got certified and became a teacher. She started in junior high where she also coached basketball, and then she moved to elementary to teach reading.

As a mom, Michelle was conscientious and loving, and endlessly patient. She wouldn’t allow her babies to chew on their toys because she was worried about possible toxins in the plastics. She had an entire closet dedicated to educational or artistic activities for kids – the kind of stuff I never feel like I have the energy for, and she shared those activities with my kids too.

In February 2016 Michelle was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The tumor was found during a colonoscopy that was booked because she had been in near constant pain. After a CT scan revealed tumors in her liver and tailbone, doctors at Baylor medical center performed the initial colon resection, followed by the liver resection and spinal surgery. Next she had six weeks of the worst chemotherapy that anyone has ever had to endure. This medicine caused her to constantly have a metallic taste in her mouth, and be intensely cold sensitive, like she had to wear hot mittens to take a gallon of milk out of the fridge. Also all the skin on her hands split and her fingers bled. This chemo was so horrible that at the end of her life, the doctors gave her the option to go back on it for maybe another few months of life, and she opted to go on hospice instead.

Her cancer journey was awful, and I don’t want to recount it. She had two spinal surgeries, multiple rounds of chemo and radiation, and she fought like hell to stay here for three whole years of pure torture. I don’t think anyone would have made a different choice than she made.

I used to think Michelle and her husband Barrett were very different, and, in some ways they were, but eventually I realized how similar they were also. They were of one mind about a lot of things, both type A, both energetic go-getters. She loved him with her whole heart, and he loved her the same way.

When Michelle got sick, Barrett took over everything that needed to be done. He made lunches and bathed kids and chauffeured to soccer all while taking care of Michelle too.

She hated to be stuck in bed. She couldn’t stand being forced to be still, unable to contribute to her family. I tried to give her things to do that she could do from bed, I bought her painting supplies and journals and encouraged her to write, but it was the work of her life that she craved, the child-rearing, wife and mother role, and the teaching and shepherding of her students. She hated not being able to be there for her students and her children as much as she wanted to be, as much as she would have been if she hadn’t been so sick. She loved her family to the moon and back. They were her everything.

Michelle was very close with her mom, Donna. They were always going on shopping trips or antiquing or to beautiful plant nurseries together. It was a special relationship, and I always viewed Donna as like a second mom to me. She always had a calm demeanor but was in many ways a total badass. Michelle always had a calm and rational approach to arguments, she would have made an amazing lawyer. She was never emotional in stating her case, just calm and collected and factual. It was devastating. There’s just no holding your own when someone argues like that. I think she got that from Donna.

Michelle’s older brother, Doug, had been friends with my older sister Katie in high school, and like Katie and I, when Michelle and Doug both lived at home they were often at odds like siblings usually are, but after he left for college I think they found their groove and became closer. Doug and Michelle had looked out for each other growing up though, despite sibling bickering, and he was a good big brother.

Michelle passed away in March, 2019. One of her last gifts to me was to invite me to her family Christmas party. We came and had a grand time, momentarily pretending all was well. Although I wasn’t related to anyone there, I felt like it was my family. At the end, Michelle’s daughter Lily (eight years old at the time) played “Silent Night” on her keyboard and we all sang together. It was like a Hallmark movie.

I wish I could tie a big beautiful bow on this, but the truth is, there is still a void left by her absence. I got grief counseling (I highly recommend The Timothy Center in Austin if you need a therapist) and I joined Grief Share at my church, but there will always be a wound in the space she left behind.

In November we lost Michelle’s mom, Donna. She went suddenly which was a shock for the family, but I know she is where she has wanted to be for the past five years, reunited with her daughter in Heaven.

Michelle’s husband Barrett and her kids Lily and James are doing as well as can be expected, and even thriving. I know Michelle would be so proud of all of them. Back in the days of My Space, the standard profile had a form that users could fill in, and one of the questions was “who I’d like to meet” and people usually put famous people or their type of attractive person in that space, but Michelle wrote “My future children” and that always stuck with me, out of all of humanity, the people she most wanted to meet were Lily and James, and I know they far exceeded her expectations.

I wish I had a way to honor her that would be worthy of her. There are still little pieces of her that remain. I have never changed the picture on the “About Me” section of this blog even though it was taken a decade ago, because Michelle took it.

I wrote this about her at the anniversary of her death last year (2023):

“I hashed out recently with my therapist that I still have residual anger over this loss. I don’t want to remember her death. I hate it. I hate that day. Yes, it was a peaceful way for her to go. I’m glad she is in Heaven with Jesus and no longer in pain or sick. But I’m still mad about the whole thing. I’m mad it happened. I’m mad she even got sick. It’s not helpful to be mad. Being mad doesn’t change any facts. But I can’t help it. There’s not even anyone to be mad at. The anger is just there, nebulous…and oily…like it leaves this anger residue on my whole life. I have been largely just working around it for a long time. I learned it’s better to go do stuff on spring break (the anniversary of her death almost always falls on Spring Break) than to just sit around being sullen and snapping at my family, but even that feels weird. Going on vacation at spring break feels like attending a carnival in funeral clothes. Nonetheless we went on vacation. On the way home I found these photos while looking for another picture in Eric’s phone. These were taken in – I think- 2015. Michelle and Barrett and the kids came to town to visit us, and I had asked if she would take an author picture of me to be used on my writer’s page for Wide Open Country, so she did. We went to the arboretum and Eric and Barrett let the kids play on the concrete cows while she snapped pictures of me in the trees. James was still in diapers. Afterwards we went to BJ’s and took these silly pictures. I just miss her. I miss her calm nature because I am usually so anxious. She was very level-headed and logical. I miss her acting dumb with me, and all the laughter. I miss having long conversations with her about everything, being confidently wrong about so many topics because we were young and so certain we knew everything. We grew up together in so many ways. I miss watching her handle all of our kids with a level of patience…not only patience, but enthusiasm, that I will never possess. She got so much joy out of teaching kids new things. That’s what made her a great teacher. I miss seeing her interact with Barrett, they made so many plans together, they were so different but also so similar in a million tiny little ways. I hate that she is gone. I just hate it. I wish I had something inspiring to say, but I guess I am really just hurting and venting. Because she was here long enough to have a say in her funeral planning, she asked us to put her Bitmoji in the slideshow we made, it was the Bitmoji that has the “Miss me?” Caption, and I think about that a lot. We do miss you, Missy. You are so very missed.”

My other best friend, Kristen, was also there for Michelle through her entire illness. I don’t feel fit to tell the story of who Michelle was to Kristen, but they were also best friends and our families hung out together and traveled together, we used to try to combine our last names – Forsyth, Abrahamsen, McManners into one weird Frankenstein of a family name Forbrahammers, or McForhamsens or other silly portmanteaus. Our kids grew up together and are sort of like cousins. Also Michelle and Kristen had the same birthday so we always celebrated together.

This photo series of the three of us really represents who Missy was. We were at Dinner, celebrating Curtis’s birthday (Curtis is Kristen’s husband). We asked Eric to snap a picture of us and he took a ton of them. In the middle of it Michelle said “yall are too far away from me,” and then put her hands on our faces and pulled us in closer. Afterwards we made silly chipmunk faces.

On Sunday Kristen and I had planned to take Michelle out someplace. Nothing big, just shopping or maybe to target, but she was sleeping a lot and none of us wanted to wake her. Finally around noon Barrett said to me, “Why don’t y’all go ahead and wake her up and make her go. I think if you don’t, she’ll regret it.” So we did.

My family came back to Austin late Sunday, and on Monday I had a dentist appointment. Barrett was texting me all day though, and finally I said, “Do you think I should come back?” And he said, “Yeah I think you had probably better.”

So I came back Tuesday and he took her to the hospital where they drained her abdomen of the fluid from the acites, and we thought that might help her sort of bounce back, but it didn’t. Barrett and I decided it was time to call everyone in, and the McManners house became a big open house/hotel for the next week as we all kept vigil with her.

I stayed there for 6 days and we sat with Michelle and painted her nails and put lotion on her hands and feet and played music for her as, little by little, she drifted into the ether. The lyrics from one of the songs we had on her playlist said it very well: “I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.” (“The Night We Met” by Lord Huron) Thats how it was. She was there and then slowly, she wasn’t.

I remember how wonderful her friends, neighbors and former co-workers were through that whole ordeal. People brought food and flowers and were just there for anything and every need that arose. Barrett’s sister in law, Sarah, was an absolute godsend. Sincerely. Nurses are the best humans on earth.

I can’t adequately describe how painful it was to watch her slip away, day by day. I finally couldn’t take it anymore after 6 days and I had to go home. I waffled over that decision all morning. I didn’t want to leave Michelle or the family but I hadn’t seen my own kids in over a week and I was starting to feel completely insane from the grief. I dawdled until I had no more excuses. Then I kissed her on the forehead and said goodbye, and stepped out into a world without my best friend.

I have no idea how I got home, I was a complete and utter basket case. I think I was going like 100 MPH down I-10 ugly crying like Kim Kardashian. I hugged my kids and cried some more, and at some point was able to go to sleep. That night, around dawn, I dreamed I saw her sitting next to my bedside. She smiled at me, and I sat up in bed, obviously, she wasn’t there.

Michelle passed sometime between 4 and 6 AM on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. It was around 12 hours after I left her.

I like to think my dream was Michelle’s way of saying goodbye, letting me know she is okay now.

Michelle was an amazing person. She was so much more than just beautiful. She was a talented photographer. She was an accomplished scholar. She was endlessly patient with children. Teaching was her jam. Not just at work, she loved teaching our kids stuff. It was crafts and science and art and even playing ball with the kids would become a physics lesson. She was judicious and genuine. She wasn’t the kind of person who engaged in toxic validation. If she saw you doing something harmful she would kindly tell you the truth. She had a very subtle and surprising humor that could make people laugh out loud, but she was also able to be sincere and loving to pretty much everyone.

I struggled a lot with Michelle’s death, and still do. Therapy has helped, Grief Share at church has helped, and having an incredible support network through my sweet neighbors and my friends in MOPS has helped.

There will never be another Michelle McManners But, my God, I am so grateful for the time I got to spend with her. What a privilege.