Thirty years ago on this date, one of the brightest stars to ever shine in my sky fell and flamed out. Her name was Tina Dawn Messer, and she was the shortest known but most connected best friend I ever had.

I met Tina in 1993 when I was doing my student teaching with Mrs. Nell Cox at Pickens High School in Upstate South Carolina. She caught my eye, not because she was cute as a button — which she was — but because she was on crutches. I did a quick double take and realized why she was on crutches: her left leg was missing from the hip down. I smiled at her and went back to what I was doing, but something about her nagged at the back of my mind. See, I’m a storyteller, and as such, I also collect stories, and I was sure she had a good one, and I wanted to hear it.

We hit it off and eventually, I got to know the story. She was a freshman playing volleyball when she got strangely tired one day at practice. She could hardly keep going, so she went and sat down on the bleachers and started rubbing her legs. Behind her knee on her left leg, she felt a golf ball sized knot. She thought it was a muscle knot at first, but when it didn’t go away, her mama took her to the doctor who, worried as he was, sent her on to the hospital for some tests.

I’m sure you probably know where this is going. It wasn’t a muscle knot; it was lymphoma, and a mighty virulent strain. The doctors were honest with her from the beginning. They said she would need chemo and radiation, but if she really wanted to improve her chances of living, she needed to have her leg amputated, so, she did. By the time I met her, she was a senior and had been on crutches for three years give or take.

She was fitted with a prosthesis, but she said it hurt to wear it for long at a time and it was awkward, so she preferred her crutches. The first time I went to her house, she showed me her room including the big box of left shoes over in the corner which she had collected over time. I told her she needed to find a girl her size with a right leg amputation and they could split the cost of shoes. She’d never thought of that.

I was about to graduate Clemson and she was about to graduate high school. I came back up to Clemson after I graduated to go to her graduation. After that, we kept in touch, mostly through hours long phone calls, and even got together a few Saturdays. She was ridiculously easy to talk to and we found out we had many things in common. We both loved Southern Rock music and all the rest of the classic rock catalog. We even sent each other mixtapes of our favorites. She loved Fleetwood Mac, and at the time, I didn’t see the appeal. Now though, through Budge’s influence, they are one of my favorite groups. Her favorite song of all though was by the Eagles, “Take It to the Limit.”

We both loved cars, and we both loved adventure. Looking back on the person I was then and comparing him to the person I’ve become, I can’t imagine me loving adventure being such a homebody now, but back then, I was different. We used to ride around the mountains of Pickens County in her car. She had a new convertible Corvette that was burnt orange, had a highly tuned engine, and an automatic transmission. She drove like a bat out of hell. When she was in a playful mood, I’d end up halfway in the floorboard on the passenger side waiting to go off the side of the mountain.

She loved life in the way only those who know how close death is really can. We would ride around singing at the tops of our lungs, talking about things we wanted to do and places we wanted to go. It was great times.

It all came to a head one night in the summer. I was over at her house on a Saturday night. It was just the two of us. Her parents had gone out for supper and said they’d be home late. We sat on the couch talking about all kinds of things when I finally looked at her and said, “Tina, why don’t we leave your mom and dad a note, go pack the Corvette and head out to Vegas and get married? It’d be one grand adventure, and I can’t think of someone more closely matched to me to spend the rest of my life with!”

She turned away and I never will forget the look in her eye when she turned back to me. She said, “Shannon, that sounds wonderful, and in another life, I’d take you up on it in a heartbeat because we really were made for each other I think, but you have to know, I’m always in danger of a relapse, and I know you and your heart and if we were together, you wouldn’t be able to stand losing me, and you will lose me — sooner rather than later. I can’t do that to you.”

That was the last we spoke of it. I’ve had six engagements counting Budge, who didn’t waste time like the others did. The story of those engagements would be a post all its own, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it. I kid about it, but it isn’t really funny. I don’t count Tina as one of those, even if I technically did ask her to marry me in a way.

Anyway, that was the last time I was at Tina’s house. We kept talking on the phone and exchanging mixtapes, but we didn’t get together anymore. The cancer did come back; this time it was in her lung. I went to see her in the hospital and she was just as bubbly as ever. We talked like we always did. She had an operation to remove a lobe of her left lung. Then she had more chemo and radiation. It went away and it looked like she was out of the woods.

We didn’t talk as much after that. I think it was just too much for both of us. The calls got fewer and fewer until I didn’t hear much from her at all. Once I realized Tina and I would never be together, I got into what would become the worst relationship of my life. I don’t want to talk about it, but it was months of stupidity and insanity lasting from Christmas of 1993 to summer of 1994. I went from a perfect match for me to the worst thing I could ever have gotten mixed up in.

But I never forgot Tina, and one day in the fall of 1994, I got a call from her mama. She said Tina’s cancer had returned and this time, Tina had decided not to fight anymore and, as Tina put it, “Let them cut me up a piece at a time. It’s time to go.” I wanted to come see her immediately, but her mama said Tina wasn’t having ANY visitors. She was in bad shape and she didn’t want anyone seeing her in that condition.

That was the last I heard for a long time. I met Budge not too long after. We started dating in January of 1995 and I was happy. In the back of my mind though, I never forgot Tina. I wondered often how she was. I knew her iron will though, so I also knew trying to see her was futile.

1995 was a hell of a year for me. I lost my beloved grandfather in July, and buried one of my wrestlers who was killed in a terrible car wreck in August, and in March of the year, I lost two of my favorite cousins in a crash on I-85. It just was a rough time all around. Budge was the only thing keeping me going. Then came September 17, 1995. I got a call that morning. It was from Tina’s hospice nurse. She asked to speak to Shannon Wham. I told her that was me. She said she had the sad news to tell me Tina had passed away just a few hours before surrounded by her mama, daddy, and brother. The nurse said she was going through Tina’s instructions of who to notify and my name was the first on the list. I thanked her and hung up the phone.

I didn’t go to the funeral. I had been to three funerals already that year, and I knew it was just a box holding what was left of a jar of clay that once was Tina. I kept her picture on my desk at home. I had one of my artistic students draw me a portrait of her from a picture I had. In it I told him to give her back her leg and give her angel’s wings. I kept that portrait over my desk at school for five years before I finally took it down.

It’s passingly strange, but in the early years of our dating and marriage, Budge was kind of jealous. She didn’t like discussing my former girlfriends. Still, she never said a word to me about having Tina’s picture or the portrait at school. I could talk about her as much as I wanted and Budge never got mad or even lightly upset. I was thankful for that because, deliriously happy as I was with Budge, I still missed Tina. There was something about her I couldn’t forget and Budge told me I didn’t have to.

To this day, though, I have a hard time sitting through “Take It to the Limit” if it comes on the radio. Budge always turns it soon as she hears the opening bars. Tina was something special. Nineteen was way to young for her to leave, but I’ll always remember her at the wheel of her Corvette, wind mussing her short hair, radio blasting around the mountains of Pickens. I miss her still.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean!