She was a year older than me. I saw her for the first time in a plaid bomber jacket, standing at the top of a staircase on the first day of Collegiate at the U of W. Blonde hair, permed and curly, shoulder length. Big glasses, clear pink plastic, and braces. Something about her standing there made me notice her, even though I could barely breathe for anxiety. I was so busy being self conscious about fitting in. We spoke, we went to the canteen. We laughed. We became friends. It was 1981. I want to ask her now to confirm that year, that day.

Heather, Mary, Calla, Monica, me. We were firm, fast friends, We were never the cool kids, but we owned our own quirky selves. We watched the Jewish crowd, the druggies, the Chinese students, the boys we thought we admired. Greg, Claus, that skinny boy who had a huge adams apple and a crush on me, who taught me how to eat boiled eggs with butter in his dirty living room. I cannot remember his name but Mary would, of course.

There was a play, The Man in the Bowler Hat - she had a part, I didn’t, until the Man fell ill, or fell over, and I knew all of his lines. She helped me practise the lines, spoke up for me, volunteered me as the replacement. Only after did we realise that I was typecast, the only person of colour. Sam Lam, the director, thought he was a big shot. Shrugged his shoulders on being confronted with the dirty evidence. “That’s the way the world works,” he said. He was a third year university student doing his coursework. He must have been 21 years old but to us, he seemed practically an old man, cynical and world-weary. I wonder if she remembers Sam Lam, I would like to ask her.

The cast party was the first party we went to, in a posh Transcona neighborhood, or was it River Heights? We bought our first bottle of wine, a chianti, Mateus, in a fat wide bottle with a straw basket over the bottom. I had chosen it in the liquor commission as we wandered, unsure through a brave new world, as the bottle my parents’ friends brought over for their late night drinking parties. That, and it was cheap. We drank it from mugs at the party. It was the first time I had drunk anything, maybe Mary too. ( I should have asked, I guess, either then or at some point in the intervening years. I want to ask now.) It was January or February. Cold, icy. Actually probably Mary drove, which is why she was able to rescue me when I drank too much, walked out in the snow in my stocking feet, and lay down, wailing that it was fine, life was done, I wanted to die. That was the first time she saved my life.

My parents did whatever parents did back then. l paid no attention. I was so completely absorbed in my adolescent angst. When they were away, we played vinyl records on the record player and danced to my special red see-through vinyl edition of The Beatles’ Twist and Shout in my living room. Her mother was a headteacher, working in the far north on a reservation, and Mary was generally left in the care of her older sister who was meant to be in charge but was mainly just really good at ignoring us.

At Mary’s house, she played guitar, we sang and ate chips, drank slurpees and big gulps, in the summer walking to the BDI for ice cream, whiled away our time talking endlessly. When we were not together, we were on the phone. My father, I can practically hear him now - shouting at me to get off, what could I possibly find to talk about all this time? Hours and hours, dissecting friendships, actions, motives, hopes, fears, dreams. I do not remember the detail of a single one of those conversations. Only that Mary and I talked pretty much every evening, for hours.

With Calla and Heather and Monica, we had dinner parties, cooking together at one of our houses. When we went to Mary’s we made spaghetti. I never eat spaghetti without thinking of her. Mary’s mum was there that day, and wanted to take a photo of all of us outside the front of the house, under a massive oak tree. We sat on the grass, Mary looking staid, Calla kneeling with one hand raised dramatically, Monica girly and sweet with her skirt artfully arranged, Me, trying to look James Dean cool. Heather, smiling sweetly. And when we moved indoors we sat on her mum’s dark brown velveteen couch. I smelt something, it smelt like shit. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to embarrass anyone. Surely it wasn’t me. But I had sat in it under the big oak tree, and smeared it on the couch. Mary’s mum was extremely amused, while I was mortified. They helped me change, Mary lent me sweats, her mum washed the couch covers and my jeans. I can still picture her kind face and her laugh. What does Mary remember of that day? I wish I could ask. The oak is gone, cut down. Or maybe it isn’t. Neither of us can check.

Mary - Always smart, watchful, thinking, analysing. Always two quiet steps ahead in her mind. I asked her once why we were friends. She said I was glamorous and she was solid, and she understood me. I have puzzled over that for years. I have never felt glamorous. But she made me feel that I shone, and that was why she loved me. Because I was beautiful, like a leopard she said. I found that strange. I have always felt much more like a piece of stone. I told her she reminded me of a house. A safe house. She laughed, and teased me that I was calling her hard and thick as bricks.

Another time we had dinner at my house, and we cooked Indian food under the direction of my mum, who definitely knew nothing and couldn’t cook. We put on saris, and there were more pictures; Mary and I joking in the garden of 1920 St Mary’s Road. The house has been demolished now, the land first bulldozed into a dyke against a raging river flood and then sold off for subdivision housing, after a road junction and traffic light appeared at the end of the driveway. Change was always going to happen, we just had no idea.

We went to Grad together, I drove, did not drink. We pretended we were happy, no dates, just some friends including Greg, Claus, the boy with the adams apple. “Chris,” Mary now whispers in my head - that was his name. I remember shopping for grad dresses. Mine was so ugly, a tent of black poly chiffon with a cream bow, Mary said levelly, “are you sure?” I loved it, I thought it looked sophisticated but my dad said “you look like a judge.” After the party we drove home at dawn, satisfied that we had danced, drank, flirted; done what we were supposed to.

I had various crushes, never confessed, as I recall. Perhaps she did too. In fact, she had a crush on Greg and thought something might happen between them then, at Grad, or later. We did not speak of it or him in the decades to come, a patch of quicksand carefully skirted round. It was me who fell for Greg, that summer after grade 12. Mary grew a little more distant. I spent time with Heather and her boyfriend Chris Keller, a floppy haired, good looking rich boy who wanted to be a pilot. Another Chris. Mary didn’t like him, thought Heather was weak and stupid to fall for him, and their friendship slowly dissolved. Mary got a job at a chicken shop, I was headed for university, just as Monica was to the U of W, and everyone else to courses, universities, other life possibilities.

That summer we went to the lake by ourselves, just the girls, on either edge of 17. The lake, an idyllic Manitoba wilderness, beautiful, rough and clear. All of us in our pajamas, building fires on the beach, washing our hair and swimming in the lake. Hiking. Drinking. Laughing. How many times did I go to the lake with Mary? With friends, with just us, in fall, in winter, at the height of the summer. Driving to the dump to see the bears. Walking up to the playground to swing. I carry the scar on my forehead from when I drank too much peach schnapps and fell screaming with laughter down a rocky embankment that raised the gravel road above winter snow. That night we crawled back to the cottage, laughing so hard. My head was bleeding. Mary hadn't wanted to wake her mum but she woke for the laughing, and came and took care of my head. She was highly amused. I couldn’t help thinking that if it was my mum and dad, they would hold it against me forever. Once, we came to a sizzling, smoking unplanned stop in my tin can Hyundai Pony at the side of the highway, I had no idea what to do, but Mary somehow magicked up a tow truck in the late summer afternoon, by the side of a corn field. Another time, she pulled over in the midday blaze and led me out into a scrubby field where a boot on a broomstick stuck out of an otherwise non-descript spot. She showed me where we could walk across a plank to the boot, which marked an artesian well with icy, clear, fresh water bubbling up. I never drink cold water on a hot, thirsty day without remembering this.

When Mary worked in the chicken shop, she called me the day she was held up at gunpoint. Ever so cool, never losing her composure. Of course she handed over all the money, she wasn’t going to risk anything. I marvelled at her coolness, couldn’t imagine how her legs hadn’t given way, why wasn’t she breaking? I felt a gulf between us that day - she was so strong, so invincible. I would have run screaming and probably been shot.

For a while, we were still close but the journey of our lives was taking us in different directions. We made an effort to go for dinner once a month, surf and turf at a local steak joint. Nights with snacks and wine, the discovery of tinned crab with crackers and salad cream, of which we ate immense amounts. We went to socials, parties, dinner, shopping trips to the Bay. Then a job up north, and I didn’t see her for a couple of years - she was unhappy, I knew.

When she came back, she was different. We still talked, went out, did things, but the divide was great and she had been changed by her experience. Her accent was northern, for a while. Her new friends were unknown to me, and mine to her. Some dating disasters, some things she did not say, some things I was ashamed to tell her. We kept each other’s secrets, but we also kept some secrets from each other. The adult divide grew into the space of our childhood, pushing us apart.

By this time I was about to start a new job in an advertising agency, no longer an administrative officer at a dull university but entering the flashy (for Winnipeg) corporate world. It was 1988. I confessed to Mary that I had no idea what to wear so we went on an epic shopping trip. I can hear her voice in my head still. “How do you want to be seen? You get to decide.” We chose a green shimmering pencil skirt suit with black velvet trim, a burgundy jacquard satin blazer, a flowy, floral print viscose summer dress set. Owning and wearing rich, attention grabbing clothes like these had never occurred to me before. Some of the things Mary said had that power, to echo across time and place, a truth spoken without adornment. With her help, that day I purchased more clothing and spent more money than I ever had before. I lamentingly, jealously, relinquished them to charity years later, once it became clear that I would never fit into them again.

Then one day she confided she’d met a man, he was really fun, she hoped he’d call again, considering the embarrassment of meeting his mother from under a duvet on the floor of his room in the family home. I was horrid to him, looked down on him because I thought he was stupid, she deserved so much more. I used to make fun of him and when we got together, she was on the inside but he was the butt of all the jokes - those he heard and those he did not. He was a clown. Loud, brash, impulsive, warmhearted and ignorant - a redneck, as I told him when he asked why I didn’t like him one beery night at a party at theirs. But they called each other Boo, another great source of mockery for the rest of us, and she was nothing if not devoted. I was a bridesmaid at their wedding with a shiny fuschia pink, fitted dress, completely not my polished and darkly ironic outsider look, which had become my trademark. Pink satin heels and a bow in my hair, no heavy black leather boots in sight. There was a lot I would do for Mary. Even now, I cringe at the photos, cringe at the man, cringe at the cramped up, crazy sad life he tried to box her into.

I had a boss at the advertising agency, a woman named Spring. She was pretentious and snobby, with designer everything, a petite, fussy hourglass figure and a clear distaste for my brand of independence. She barely condescended to speak to me but when she did, I imagined she slowed her speech, enunciated her words and simplified her vocabulary because she thought I was a dullard. And truth be told, around her I would respond in kind, remaining silent, tripping over my words and feet, angry with myself for not shining. The agency was nominated for an award, and the creative team was going to the dinner - I had nothing to wear but Spring was gloating about her $400 dress for weeks in advance - not to me directly, but I heard her, as I was probably meant to. At the last minute I borrowed a dress from Mary, I can still hear her desultory offer, “you can borrow the black dress I bought in the Bay basement January sale if you like - I haven’t had a chance to wear it yet.” It was a confection, with a fitted, plunging neckline, a wide black satin ribbon belt,flowing organza lining and black lace overlay with a handkerchief hem. I felt more glamorous than ever before. Arriving at the event, colleagues marvelled at my transformation, I felt a bit like Cinderella - normally clad in terrifyingly punk black and scaring everyone with my stare. Except Spring, who could not believe that I hadn’t heard her lengthy description of her own dress and had turned up in the exact same one. She screamed and turned red. She banned me from standing anywhere near her and said I couldn’t go up on the stage to collect the award if we won. We didn’t and we all got very drunk and danced and had a great time, except her. She fumed quietly to the big bosses and then left early. I channelled Mary.

London was so very far away, we managed only four visits in the intervening years. She once brought a ride-on toy only slightly smaller than her entire suitcase for my son, who loved it, and her, dearly. When we each had two children, we met up in Winnipeg. Normally staid and motherly we suddenly both felt like adult imposters, put in charge of children only slightly younger than our good selves. We spent the time gokarting, gadding about in a limo from the airport and screeching out of the window, encouraging our children to have the time of their lives while we had ours, again. I missed Mary so much in advance, while we were there with her. Later, we visited the Cotswolds, paddling in streams, marvelling at stone cottages, wandering the cobbled streets of Stratford-on-Avon. I felt proud to show her my adopted country. She ate her first kebab in London. And once again, we found ourselves screaming hysterically with laughter as an early version of Google Maps attempted to take us out onto Vancouver Airport’s runway. Things were always fun, with Mary.

But time took its toll as it always does, and our contact dwindled to the occasional email, the attempts at trips that didn’t come to fruition, and a reserve of things unspoken for both of us grew deeper. Our lives were so different, our troubles and fears and things to endure so heavy. I never told her in words but in my head, I was often having the conversation with her, imagining what she would say.

Our mothers died, mine first, then hers. We both knew the immensity of the other’s loss. And out of the sadness, came a rediscovery, a joyful current of friendship that ran so deep, even the fissures of time and place couldn’t eradicate it. The freedom of Ireland, ignoring her weakness, her headaches. Her last time in a church, lighting a candle against the dark. The last time she touched the sea. The last boat. The final wearing of the t-shirt kept for best.

In our last phone conversation, she from a hospital bed in Ireland and me, agonising over the sadness of my son, suddenly takes an urgent tone, and says “I am your person. If anyone understands, I do. You can talk to me anytime. I know.” I could not speak for the lump in my throat but I knew she knew that. I dearly want to talk to her now.

At the end, what's left? Darkness descends, the night draws in, the days are shorter and the cold starts to pinch. I feel it coming in the air, my bones, the touch of flame in the trees, a mist approaching. I help her prepare, give advice. Hold her hand. Braid her hair. Watch her fade. Tell her she has been my best friend, always. But as the plane pulls out onto the runway I am left behind. I cannot do any more. She will fly into the night. Her journey is now hers alone; I can only wave from inside the terminal.