I'll be forty in less than two months.  I've thought about this upcoming birthday more than I should.  This birthday that's right around the corner was on my mind yesterday because my cousin who was the first to do everything...and anything would have turned forty yesterday.

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My childhood was one that could have been written in storybooks; not that any thing fantastic or history-making happened. I had and have the best siblings a girl could ask for.  My loving parents were the appropriate balance of cautious and permitting.

I couldn't watch Rosanne or Three's Company on TV but I could adventure the great outdoors including the pastures behind mine and my cousin's house.  She and I tore through our little town like bandits, hiding out under the Bosque River bridge and setting up a club in a barn we thought abandoned.  We did things I never would have done on my own; like walking across a shallow frozen pond that really wasn't frozen and eating an entire can (each) of Duncan Hines icing for a snack.

I had courage that led to all kinds of adventure in the form of a cousin who was two months older than me. Her name was Leah. Leah Kathryn.  My Hallie (Kathryn) is named after her.

Almost twenty four years ago, on an afternoon in December I was making plans to spend the evening with my cousin; my best friend.  Leah had earned first chair in the Glen Rose High School Band and she'd asked me to go with her to the Christmas concert. It was our second year to be going to different schools and we took every opportunity we could to hang out.

Bold and boisterous, she was everything I was terrified to be.

The plan was that she would call me the second she got home from school and we would set a time for her to come pick me up. She'd turned sixteen just weeks before and it was eleven days before I'd turn sixteen. I waited that day after school and no phone call came.  I started calling her house, further alarming her mother who was worried that she hadn't made it home yet.

My uncle ended up calling my mom.  Leah, my cousin had been involved in a wreck on her way home.  My uncle asked that we drive my aunt to the hospital only giving us the information that "it was bad".  When my aunt and I were directed to a small office in the hospital joining my uncle, I remember hearing two words, "She's gone".

Just like that.

The plans we had made for that afternoon were gone.  Our promise to be one another's maid of honor? Gone.  No more spending the night that turned into spending two or three nights.  My confidant, keeper of my deepest secrets and blood sister was gone. (I'm talking real blood sister, the kind of sisterhood formed by cutting our finger with the tab of a Dr. Pepper can at recess.) Actual blood sisters.  And we kindly allowed other brave souls to join us.

A week before her death, we saw each other driving through town.  We quickly pulled into the post office and had one of our last conversations.  At our leaving, she peeled off the "Out of Town" label which belonged on the mail slot at our post office.  She stuck it across my chest just to see the look of sheer shock on my face; something she did quite often.

The night of her death I tore through all of my belongings gathering each and every memento I had of her. The "Out of Town" sticker was one of those things.

Out-of-town

When she left town, it was one of the worst chapters of my life.  Still, I'm glad she was written in my story. I don't see her name written in the pages these days but if I'm really looking, I see her when I see someone run on their tiptoes.  When I listen closely, I can hear her.  She was the world's best knuckle popper. When I see Hallie and her cousin fight over board games, I see me and I see Leah twenty-five years ago.

And more, there are those chapters in my story, my beautiful story to be looked back on- like the one where she as a fifth grader, all fiery in nature,  stood up to a high school bully in the school restroom.   I can read those chapters again and again.  I can laugh at the time we attempted to clean out her fish aquarium.  A water hose was sent through the bathroom window and turned on.  We forgot that a sprinkler was attached.

I can remember fondly how we listened to her Bangles tape over and over while sitting cross-legged and barefoot in her bedroom floor surrounded by rainbow wallpaper and taped-up drawings of unicorns as mystical as she was.

For now, she's out-of-town.   But I'll earmark the pages with her on them.  I'll highlight my favorite parts.  I'll read them to my children. I'll treasure the pages where she's not.  That's something God has taught me to do.

I'll approach forty with a courage much like my fiery and fearless cousin.  I'll look at it as an adventure; what life should be.

And I'll look to pages ahead, Leah's still living her story. It's chapters ahead of mine. I'm thankful that God in his grace has written us both in his own "forever story";  two characters whose paths will cross again.