It’s hard to believe that Clarissa has been gone for two years. It just seems like yesterday that we were eating pizza in the television lobby in Reed Hall. Unfortunately, over the past few years, our meeting place was in various rooms in Crawford Long Hospital.

Clarissa had Crohn’s disease, which is a hereditary condition in which, depending on the severity, your intestines are shredded into ribbon. It makes it impossible to eat almost anything, not to mention going to the bathroom. Her dad has Crohn’s on top of diabetes, but it was never as severe as Clarissa’s. Clarissa was always pushing herself to get better so that she can get back to classes at the University of Georgia so she can finish getting her degree in poly sci. I think that was one of the reasons that she always winded up in the hospital.

I remember the last time that I saw her. She was not doing well that day. I had to help her sit and get to the bathroom. She started to thank me. All of her other so called friends bailed out on her. All of her relatives had better things to do. Schedules to keep. Business meetings to attend. There were very few people that gave her more than just a passing thought. I was told that I was there most, outside of her parents and younger sister. The last thing that I ever did with her is help her into bed and closed the door as she fell asleep.

Two days later, I get a call from Clarissa’s father. He was the one that broke the news to me. Clarissa died from an infection through an operation she had done to remove the diseased part of her small intestine. I was in shock. Even though it’s been years, I guess a part of me still is. She was supposed to get out of the hospital the day before. She always got better before. It wasn’t supposed to turn out the way that it did. However, this was really happening. One of my best friends on the planet is dead. There was nothing that I could do about it.

At the funeral, I was just in a daze. I served as one of the pallbearers. Burying one of your friends is like burying a part of yourself. I just remember the weeks after the funeral just calling her cell phone just to hear her voice. She always thought that she was ugly because the steroids she had to take bulked her up. I always though of her then and now to be beautiful. She was one of the few people on my short list of people that I know that always had unconditional love for me. No matter how bad I screwed up, she always had my back. No matter how much of a failure I thought I was, Clarissa always cared. Never turned her back on me. There aren’t too many people who will stand by you through thick and thin anymore. I honestly think that people like this are a dying breed. On the other hand, Clarissa was around. Maybe there’s hope for us all.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of my friend. Whenever I have a day everyone is yelling and screaming at me and want my head on a platter, I think of Clarissa. Where ever she is, I think that she’s in my corner. Then, I don’t feel so bad.