My best friend of 22 years recently got married. We grew up together, and our families were extremely close once. I consider her and her twin sister to be my soul-sisters, and their mother is like an aunt to me. They feel the same, and love my mother and me dearly.

My wonderful mother unfortunately passed away about eight years ago. Between then and now, I have been estranged from my biological family, and my friends’ family and mine also stopped talking completely, except for my best friend and me. I was therefore the only member of my biological family to attend the wedding, and I was a bridesmaid. Obviously, it was very emotional for everyone involved.

Of course, being a bridesmaid at my best friend’s wedding was a huge honor, and I loved every second, but my best friend had a bit of a surprise for me. She and her husband decided to observe a Jewish tradition in which you call upon the names of deceased relatives to join you in the special occasion.

Amongst the names of their respective deceased relatives, I suddenly heard the rabbi say my mother’s name. I was overwhelmed by the honor they had given my mother, and it stands as the most heart-warming gesture anyone has ever made in her memory.

Later, the bride told me that the rabbi had not wanted to include her name as “she was not related by blood,” but that she insisted on it.

Thank you, Sissa; I love you so much!

(My friend and I are in our early 20s at the time this story takes place, and my friend has just gotten her first office job with her own desk. She’s so excited about it that I decide to mail a letter to the office, to be delivered to her at her new desk. However, as a joke, all the letter says is variations of “blah blah, blabby blah blah-blah” and so on for an entire page, and is signed “Love, [My Name]” at the end. The letter arrives.)

Friend: “Oooh, I got mail! Look, it’s from my friend!”

(She opens the letter on her lunch break, reads it, and manages NOT to dissolve into laughter. Instead, she pretends it is very interesting and makes many “Ooh” and “wow!” comments, in full view of the other coworkers who are also on their lunch breaks.)

Coworker: “What’s it say?”

Friend: *handing over the letter* “Here, you can read for yourself! So nice of my friend to send me a letter. She recently moved out of town, you know. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

Coworker: “What? All this says is ‘blah’!”

Friend: “No, it doesn’t! Look! It says, ‘Dear [Friend], I miss you. The weather this week is scorchingly hot…’”

(She took the letter back and made up a story on the spot, pretending to read from the sheet full of “blahs” and using details from an earlier phone conversation we’d had. The entire office was baffled. When she called me later to relate the story, we were in tears from laughing so hard!)

(A childhood friend and I are on the same course at the same university. We are in our first year, and I assume everything is going well. I am in a local café when my friend comes in.)

Friend: “I hate this!”

Me: “We can go somewhere else?”

Friend: “No, uni! I hate uni!”

Me: “It isn’t that bad.”

Friend: “I didn’t even want to come!”

Me: “Then why did you?”

Friend: “Because you did.”

(Great. Landing yourself in debt and forcing yourself into higher education, just so you can be with your friend.)