Milestones

I graduated with my B.A. in Spanish two weeks ago! It's a great feeling to know I don't have tuition, exams, or 15-minute cross-campus speed walks between classes for a while (or for EVER if I decide not to go to grad school after taking a year off)!
My whole family came for the weekend, with the exception of Austin & his wife, and Katie & her fiance. It was great to see everyone and spend time together!

After everyone had left, I got a call on Wednesday morning, May 13th, from Courtney with the news that Becky had passed away about an hour earlier. She had finished all the treatment that her doctors had for her back in August, and had been hanging in there for the last several months, though the cancer was continuing to take over her body and make things increasingly more painful for her.

I was able to drive out to Oklahoma on Friday & spent the weekend with Courtney. On Saturday, Courtney graduated from OU with her Bachelor's in Psychology, and I was really happy to be able to be there for that. Monday was Becky's funeral. It was a beautiful service, most of which Becky had planned herself beforehand. Her family put several sweet touches in it, too, and the whole event really honored the beautiful, loving, and dynamic person that Becky was to all of us in this life. It was a tough day for Courtney and me, saying goodbye to such a dear friend and former roommate. During the times that we all three lived in Norman, we spent a large portion of our time together, and Courtney & I each had our own unique individual friendships with Becky, as well. I'm grateful to have been able to spend four days with Courtney, and to mourn the loss of our close mutual friend together. We spent a good part of the weekend sharing little stories and memories of Becky as they came to our minds, and it would have been very difficult to not have had the support of each other and mutual love for Becky that we share.

It was really meaningful to me that we each had a milestone that week; though Becky's "graduation" from this mortal life on Wednesday looked different from Courtney's & my graduating from universities on the Saturdays immediately before and after her death, we each completed a phase of our lives and are continuing in our individual journeys...each accompanied and supported, in my opinion, by the other two friends.

During one of the last real conversations that Becky & I had on the phone, we talked about our friendship, and emphasized to each other that although it was likely we would not be spending the next 50 or so years seeing one another and talking on the phone in this life, that after we had both made it to the other side, we would most definitely still have a very strong friendship, and made plans to "live in the same neighborhood", however that turns out to be in the next life! I am so grateful to have had Becky Marie in my life for the past seven years! She taught me some things that I don't think I would have been able to learn in any other way during our friendship, especially during the two years that we lived together, as well as the past 18 months of this battle with cancer that she fought so valiantly. I am so honored that she shared a small portion of her experience by asking me to shave my head in support of her. The lessons I learned about Christ's atonement as a result of that experience will be invaluable in my journey here on this earth, and her example of faith during all of her trials that I witnessed, not just cancer, will continue to point the way back to Christ and our Heavenly Father during my life!



I wrote several posts about my experiences shortly after Becky's diagnosis, but a few of them I had never published on this blog. I have posted them in their original dates and labeled each one under the tag "Becky". It is really important to me to preserve the memories that I have of this precious friend and amazing woman. If you have any memories to share of her, I would love to hear/read them!