You Make My Heart Stop
Of the three triplets I was friends with since high school, I was the least close with Anna. I knew her as a bookish, yet beautiful, girl who had her own friends and didn’t like to run cross country like her sisters. I didn’t like her any less, I just didn’t spend as much time with her. She was usually off working at Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, or Jimmy John’s Sub Shop, or reading a novel up in her room while Caroline and Grace played Nancy Drew computer games with me or scared me with stories of how their 1800s house was haunted.
But it was Anna who filmed our entire Hunger Games parody video sophomore year, acting in some memorable parts but mostly holding us together as the main cameraman. We put the finished product on YouTube and to this day still contribute to the 40,000 plus views every now and again.
It was Anna who really woke me up from my boyfriend stupor junior year by saying that I was ignoring her sister (Caroline) for a boy (my first boyfriend) and that that was why I was never around their house anymore. She wasn’t wrong, and I attempted to repair my friendship with the triplets shortly after this comment.
It was Anna who surprised me freshman year of college by joining a sorority. I had never expected anyone in my friend group to join such an organization (although a great number of them did), and I had a rather negative view of them until Anna joined and started sending home pictures of her adventures. I thought that if she was in a sorority, it couldn’t be that bad, right?
It was Anna who got me to start praying every single day when her heart stopped sophomore year of college.
She was rushed to the hospital, placed in an induced coma, and the doctors were able to save her life on the condition that she use a pacemaker for the rest of her life, and refrain from highly exerting physical activity (like running, which Anna didn’t like anyway).
Looking back on Anna’s recovery and hospital time, it’s amusing to recall that the moment she woke up, she demanded her cell phone. It’s touching to note that her sisters and friends started the #AnnaStrong campaign on Facebook, getting the movement popularized at Anna’s alma mater of Otterbein University. The best part, though, is that Anna’s boyfriend Jordan, who lived in Maine and had been dating her since they met as camp counselors, rushed to be by her side as soon as he heard the news of the incident.
He moved to Ohio when she was recovered enough to return to school.
The first time I met Jordan he told me that he knew he was going to marry Anna from the moment he met her. He proved this by proposing to her shortly after Christmas 2016 with a necklace suggesting her initials were AJL instead of AJP.
When Anna’s dad succumbed to dementia and had to be placed in a care facility, Jordan moved in with Anna’s mom to keep her company in the big old house. When I visited the family over Thanksgiving, I saw their engagement photos and heard of their wedding plans. Sitting in the kitchen with them, watching how Jordan perpetually looks at Anna like he can keep her heart beating with just his gaze, I felt so incredibly overjoyed at someone else’s happiness. It’s not like I don’t have my own love story; I do, but when I tell my boyfriend how he makes my heart stop, I don’t mean it literally.
Anna and Jordan plan to wed in May of next year, and even though I’m giving up a trip to Australia to attend the ceremony, I couldn’t imagine missing out on watching my friend marry the love of her life. Anna’s heart will then be full, and Jordan’s will surely skip a beat when he sees her walking down the aisle.
