When you are in elementary school, you think that nothing can tear you and your best friend apart. You are convinced that you guys will be best friends forever. You promise to be each other's maid of honor when you two get married one day. You two feel invincible.

But, what happens when your best friend is taken too soon? What happens when one day you two are playing barbies and the next you are getting a call saying something went wrong and there was nothing anyone could do? What do you do then?

Having your best friend taken from you too soon is like losing a part of your childhood that you can never get back. You are too young to understand what truly happened, so you take comfort in the fact that maybe she is playing with the best Barbies in the whole wide world somewhere magical, filled with rainbows, candy, and unicorns. Those thoughts get you by for a couple of years until you hit the age of maturity. You get hit in the face with the cold, harsh reality.

You get in the habit of asking, "Why her?" You have countless nights of just lying awake until the early hours of the morning thinking over every moment you two spent together. Was there anything I could have done differently? What if she was here now? Did she ever know how much she meant to me?

People say that dealing with grief gets easier as time passes. I can tell you they are liars. Each year that passes that she is not here, you feel this emptiness in your chest. The amount of time spent thinking about her is less than it used to be, but when those thoughts creep in, the familiar pain and sadness comes creeping into your chest to stay for a while.

When your best friend is taken from you far too soon, you hold on to the memories. You hold on to every laugh, every joke, every moment you two spent together. You learn to move on, you can't grieve forever. But there will always be this little hole in your heart and thoughts of what could have been.