It was the middle of fifth grade and I was the new girl.

I was the shy new girl.

I was the shy new girl who waited for two hours after school one afternoon for someone to pick her up, growing more certain with every passing second that the world had turned into a cold and hostile place, especially for fifth grade girls.

By the time my mother pulled her VW Squareback up to the curb, my ears were ringing too loudly to hear her profuse apologies about a communication mix-up with my aunt. I was firmly convinced that the rest of my life in this new school was going to be as miserable as that afternoon had been.

Then I met Lori.

Thanks to my stellar reading abilities (not to brag, but I still read at an 11th grade level), I found myself in the small, advanced fifth grade reading group with Lori and her good friend Carrie. They had known each other since kindergarten and had no doubt that they would be friends for the rest of their lives.

Instead of serving to exclude me from their friendship, their long association bolstered them with enough security to be able to welcome me in. Soon I was receiving notes passed under the desks, as well as invitations to hang out at the mall and to attend weekend sleep-overs.

Even at 10-years-old, Lori showed a special talent for bringing people together.

No sooner had I found a place in the social circle of Mrs. Cawley's fifth grade class than we all found ourselves thrust into the upheaval of middle school.

In the swirl of social and emotional uncertainty, Lori was a touchstone. She made new friends easily and genuinely. And she connected her old friends and her new friends with a natural grace that would make most adults envious.

When you were with Lori, you felt welcome, comfortable and important.

She and I were friends throughout the rest of our school years.

Sometimes we were very close. In ninth grade, we were in love _ in LOVE, I tell you _ with the same boy. We courted him in tandem. We took turns calling his house. We invited him to join both of us at the movies.

And the night he told me that I was the one he liked best, Lori and I were close enough that it took only minutes to find out he had told her the same thing. Sometimes we drifted apart, as high school friends do. But every time we reconnected, I marveled at the symmetry and at our ability to pick up right where we left off.

Now that I have a couple decades of social experience behind me, I realize that it was Lori's open and welcoming spirit _ not mere coincidence _ that made our friendship a thing that could be stepped into so easily.

I'm sad to say that after high school, we drifted apart and never made the effort to reconnect. We would run into each other every now and then. She met my son in a movie theater lobby once, and she said he was gorgeous.

She told me she had seen my name in the paper, and liked what I wrote.

She had gone back to college and was studying to be a pharmacist.

We promised we'd get together.

We didn't.

Last week, my brother called and told me that he had run into Lori's brother Jerry online, which is a great place to run into people who live 2,000 miles away. Jerry had heard that I had been diagnosed with cancer, and he passed along his happiness that things were going so well for me.

Lori also had been diagnosed with cancer, and she passed away last year.

I've said it before: I hate cancer.

I hate what it does and I hate what it takes. I hate the knowledge that surviving it can seem like an unpredictable cocktail of good medicine, right timing and dumb luck.

I hate what Lori's family has had to endure. I hate that Lori didn't get 100 good years in which to share and teach her brand of goodness. I hate that I can find no wisdom in this story. No lesson.

I hate cancer.

Elizabeth Trever Buchinger is a freelance writer who has been a cancer survivor for two years and counting. She can be reached at VillageWordsmith@hughes.net.