A true friend is like a good bra, hard to find, lifts you up, gives you support and always close to your heart.

Today I find myself unable to concentrate - work is slow and interrupted - by phone calls, emails and mostly by my frustrated mind. I am slowly getting the feeling I should just give up on trying to work. Just do the basics and plod through this afternoon's meetings.

You see my BFF Hesti for the last 23 years is leaving today for Canberra Australia. For 3 years or forever. Who knows if you have not done it before, taken the plunge and moved your whole life there, would you move it back? Gosh, my writing is as confused as my mind.

We met on the first day we went for the selection process to study architecture way back in 1987. We quickly formed a group of friends and stayed connected through our years of study. She finished a year ahead of me, finishing her course in the minimum time while a nasty car accident on the day that our 3rd year exams started resulted in me not completing my one main subject and finishing a year later..

In our personal lives, things ran on completely different time schedules and scales - resulting in us spending a lot of time together as friends, but not necessarily including partners. She got married the year after she finished studying and I was honored to be at her side for the day. I was as single as can be. Later as she was enjoying those wonderful first years of marriage, my relationship at the time fell apart. She was supportive, as always. The many years of single life followed for me and although we both had our own circles of friends, the two of us stayed in touch, stayed close and always supportive. Just as I met Hunter their daughter was born and at our wedding, Hesti just found out she was pregnant again. I remember bumping into them in Brooklyn Mall at the movies a couple of weeks later - Hesti in tears after finding out it was twins. I never knew that she would find me the same, on her doorstep about 6 years later, also expecting twins. The truth is that we have the same "package" in life - a girl, followed by twin boys with almost the same time spacing. We both have a son that presents us with challenges. As we moved along with our parallel lives, the support has always been there, mutually I would like to think. Certainly at times, Hesti has been the best friend shoulder for me to cry on.

Today I am finding it hard to think that I will not just be able to pick up the phone and call her. Not to just meet quickly for lunch as we often do. Yes, we shall skype, we will mail and she has started a blog - Mission down under, but it can not possibly be the same.

Today I am choosing to not say goodbye - we said our goodbyes on Tuesday at lunch and yes, I cried. We both did. I am not going to the airport and I know that she is totally fine with that. In fact, I am not going to call her because I will cry. I will text her. I will say "Auf Wedersehen" as the Germans do - "Until we see each other again", not goodbye, because I simply can not say goodbye today. Hes, I will see you on the 10th of January, or very close to it. (She is coming over for a visit - does this not make is so much easier?)

Godspeed my friend. I let you go with the old Irish blessing:

“May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.”