Sheona

When I hit my late 20s about 10 years ago, I figured I was pretty much "full up" as far as friends were concerned.

I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a ton of interesting people who I had known since practically forever and with whom I barely had time to keep up friendships. I was busy, really busy, and I just didn't have the time nor the inclination to invest in a brand new friendship.

And then I met her.

It was at a keg party of all places. An affair to which Rob - my then newish boyfriend - dragged me. We were surprised to arrive and find a house overflowing with hundreds of debacherous teenagers and when he got lost in the crowd I gravitated towards a woman closer to my own age who seemed similarly bemused at the attention we attracted from boys a decade our junior.

Sheona was a colleague of Rob's - a set script supervisor - and after a few drinks we let our inner cougars roar and formed a bond that I have come to cherish as one of the most important in my life.

Here's the thing about friends you meet later in life: they love you for the person you are, not the person you were. There is no comforting common history and no sense of obligation. There is simply chemistry and a sense that no matter how busy you are, you must fit this person into your life because they were sent to make your life better...to make you better.

And so Sheona was. And has.

Sheona has inspired me to dream and to dream big. She is a mother. She is a partner. She is a maker of beautiful, important films that celebrate life and loss. When I spend time with her I come away invigorated, renewed, filled with the sense of my own strength and possibility.

Sheona helped me through endless rewrites of my film script and sat proudly through its premiere. She celebrated with me when I married, mourned when I learned I might never have a child and celebrated again when Graham made his debut.

Her daughter's birthday party was the first one Graham ever attended and when I read the eulogy at my mother-in-law's wake it was her face in the crowd that steadied me and gave me the strength to continue.

Sheona moved 3,000 miles away from me last week and I don't know what I'm going to do without her.

She has been my rock these past several months. I have literally cried on her shoulder and she has fortified me with her wise words and the gentle, pragmatic way she has of looking at the world.

She and her actor partner are off for greener pastures on another coast and as much as I know we will always be friends, I am still bereft over the distance that geography will inevitably create between us.

Godspeed Sheona.

Thank you for being my friend and for making my life better. Thank you for teaching me that one's life can never be too full to accommodate a kindred spirit.