Royally Bummed Out

My best friend from high school is moving. I'm so terribly sad by this that it seems unreal and I can't seem to wrap my head around it.

When we graduated high school, we went off to different colleges, but we kept in touch and even lived near each other. She went to Utah Valley State College (now UVU) and I attended BYU. So she was in Orem and I was in Provo. After I finished college, she moved to Ogden and I moved to California. One year later, I got married in Los Angeles and she was the maid of honor at my wedding. One year after that, she got married and I was able to attend her wedding in Bountiful, Utah. After our weddings, I stayed in California for a year and then moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho. After she got married, she moved to Pocatello, Idaho because that's where her new husband was from and was going to school.

She was there for the birth of my first child. We moved back to California shortly after that and I didn't get to be there for the births of her children, but we kept in touch, by phone and email over the next seven years. She stayed in Idaho and we moved from California to Arizona and moved around Arizona a couple times during that time.

When we moved up to Utah in 2009, she also moved to Utah, within only a week or two of our move. Since then, we've spent lots of time together. Our kids, who are close in age, are friends and even attended each other's birthday parties. She taught my two older boys piano lessons for several months. We've had play groups with other high school friends and girls' nights out also.

But now she is moving to Arizona. Could be a pretty permanent thing. We might move back to Arizona sometime in the future, but I wouldn't be surprised if she moves back to Utah or Idaho at the same time we move back to Arizona. I'm so sad.

My kids will need a new piano teacher. All the fun plans we had this summer-play groups, girls' nights, taking our daughters to the Princess Festival, going out on a double date for our anniversaries (she got married one year and one day after we did ), going to our 15-year high school reunion together, canning peaches, and just being there for each other, all gone in the blink of an eye.

Usually I am the one moving. I haven't ever really experienced a very close friend moving away from me. I will see her again and probably often, since my parents still live in the Phoenix area and we go down there at least once a year. Her parents and siblings live up here in the Salt Lake area, so I'm sure we will see each other. But it's been so nice to have her close by after all these years since high school and college only to have to go separate ways again.

I'm so very sad.