My Friend Laura Died Yesterday. If I Hadn't Met Her, I'd Be a Different Person Today.

Life sucks. But sometimes it's also magic.

My friend Laura South died yesterday at the age of 59.

I met her in 1983, in the first week of my first year of college. It’s a cliché that when people are asked if they’d change anything about their past, they say, “No, because that’s what made me who I am today, and if I changed that, I might not be that person.”

But in this case, it’s true. If I hadn’t met Laura then, I’d be a completely different person today.

My friend Laura, her then-husband Danny, and me (front), around 1992, in our mid-20s.

We bonded instantly.

Laura was whip-smart — she would go on to get a perfect score on the “Quantitative Reasoning” part of her GRE test. And the conversation between us was always so effortless and energizing — completely boundless.

In fact, we had such a weirdly close bond that everyone wondered why we didn’t date — including Laura, who openly admitted she had a crush on me.

So eventually, I said the 1980s version of, “Let’s unpack that, shall we?” And it took me all night, but I finally got around to admitting that I thought I might be gay.

“You think you’re gay,” she said, “or you are gay?”

“I am gay,” I said — the first time I’d ever said it out loud.

She was, of course, instantly accepting — being fiercely non-judgmental was always Laura’s brand. But she also smiled and said, a bit sardonically, “Well, that clarifies things, doesn’t it?”

It actually clarified things for both of us.

I’d spent my whole life desperately hiding who I was: a self-conscious, overly intellectual, artsy gay dork. But here, finally, was someone I didn’t have to hide from — someone who celebrated the real me.

The summer after I graduated from college, we shared a bedroom in a crappy little house off-campus. One night, we were up late, lost in conversation, and I was lamenting how I was an “adult” now — too old to do things like, say, roll down a grassy hill like a kid.

“That’s not true,” she said. “We could go roll down a grassy hill right now.”

“At three in the morning?” I said.

She sat upright. “Why not?”

So we left the house and walked more than a mile to a downtown park where we found a big grassy hill, and we rolled down it like little kids, again and again, laughing like absolute maniacs.

No longer a kid? I’d never laughed this hard when I was younger.

The actual grassy hill, in Riverfront Park in Spokane, Washington, that Laura and I rolled down at five in the morning. Photo by Mark Wagner.

Unfortunately, we were both adults now, and we soon had our share of adult problems. Our first sexual encounters, which were both amazing, led to an HIV scare for me and an unplanned pregnancy for her.

We also both had relationship problems, including one guy I dated who turned out to be, uhhh, really screwed up.

In fact, one of the few times that Laura felt she had to apologize to me was for encouraging me to stay with that guy.

“I really am sorry,” she said. “I just wanted so badly for things to turn out well between you two.”

Which was pretty much Laura in a nutshell: trying too hard to see the best in other people.

We also both had our share of family drama.

My mother discovered I was gay by snooping through my private things. I’d assumed her reaction would be bad, but it was even worse than I’d expected. Fortunately, I happened to be staying with Laura that weekend, and she was able to talk me down off the ledge.

Later, Laura and I lived together for years, and there were problems with her open adoption, and my career woes, and her marriage, and my mom’s early-onset Alzheimer’s, and her divorce, and on and on and on.

But Laura was always there for me. And while I’ve never been able to be as fiercely non-judgmental as Laura — no one is — I was always on her side.

And there were so many happy times too: skinny-dipping with Maureen up at Priest Lake, that road-trip with Tom to visit Yolanda in California, that eerie moonlit walk with Tim along those train tracks in Eastern Oregon.

At some point, Laura and I started “applauding” nature — we would literally stand back and clap whenever we came upon a scene of unparalleled beauty.

Eventually, Laura moved back to Oregon while Michael and I stayed in Seattle, and it became harder for Laura and me to see each other. Then in 2017, Michael and I left America to become digital nomads, and it became harder still — a weekend at a hot spring once, and another week together two summers ago, when we inner-tubed the Willamette.

Laura and I, two summers ago, at the annual gathering of the Dorky Hat Society.

We also still chatted online, exchanging book recommendations and openly fearing for the future of America. But it was never enough.

Last June, Laura had been lethargic for a while, and she went to the emergency room — only to discover she had what turned out to be Stage IV Adrenocortical Carcinoma, a rare cancer of the adrenal glands.

She texted me to say, “The good news is you’re in my inner circle, where I share important news as it happens.” Then, sardonic again, she added, “The bad news is I have cancer, and it might be really bad.”

I happened to be in America at the time, and I rushed down to spend a long weekend with her.

Later, when it became clear just how serious things were, Michael and I cut our Asia trip short, planning to return home two months early.

But it wasn’t early enough.

Last Wednesday, with me in Japan and her in hospice, we video-chatted, and she asked me, “Why didn’t we spend more time together these last few years?”

And I thought, Because we were FUCKING IDIOTS!

What if I hadn’t met Laura back in 1983? What if my first “coming out” experience had been one of shock and cruelty? What if Laura hadn’t been there all the times I needed her — a little sardonic but also endlessly compassionate, always determined to see the absolute best in everyone?

These are timelines that I’m glad I never had to endure.

Laura and I used to endlessly ponder the meaning of existence — including what came after death. I was always the dour skeptic. But we still made a solemn promise to each other that whoever died first would try to contact the other — to give them the “answer” to what comes next.

Before she died, I told Laura I had since changed my mind about the existence of life after death, which is true. Maybe it’s self-serving, but at this age, I am now wide open to almost any eventuality, and I told her I was certain that, one way or another, we would see each other again.

Laura died yesterday, and I haven’t heard from her yet. But that’s okay — she’s probably busy exploring the universe of endless possibilities.

Besides, I know we really will be together again. There’s a grassy hill with our name on it, and I plan to spend at least part of eternity rolling down it with Laura, feeling like a kid again, both of us laughing like absolute maniacs.

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my other newsletter about my travels at BrentAndMichaelAreGoingPlaces.com.