Minutes ago, I mailed a letter to a friend. It was a letter I'd put off writing for weeks, since I'd seen her at Christmas.

J is an alcoholic. This I have known for years, from long periods of sobriety and these more recent ones of heavy drinking. But at Christmas, it seemed to me she had turned a corner. Her humor - usually so smart and unconventional that it often made me snort with laughter - was this time far over the top and crude. It was no longer original or funny. Several times, I was embarrassed by her words. Most alarming, she repeated stories - several times in the same day, sometimes in the same hour.

I spent two nights with her and, to my shame, lied the third night and told her I was going home early. In fact, the friends in whose cabin I was staying and I had agreed we did not want to see her again.

It was Christmas Eve. I knew she was alone that night, her ex-husband out of town with her only daughter. My heart broke for her. Yet I understood my friends' viewpoint and frankly, I felt the same.

I have pulled away from her in the past, for the very same reason. When we met, she was sober. She stayed that way for years. Then, while on an island vacation several years ago, she had one drink. It felt good, she said, so much so that she wanted to drink more. But she swore she could control it.

The day before Christmas, she drank three microbrews before lunch, swallowed a major painkiller and emptied most of a bottle of wine during the afternoon.

There are friends who share deep thoughts with you, friends who inspire, who offer advice, who listen to your troubles and share theirs with you, those who feel as comfortable as home and as light as air. Laughter plays a part in them all.

But then there are those who consistently make you laugh 'til you pee your pants, snort or clap your hands in delight.

There are only a handful of people in everyone's life like that, whose humor strikes a chord so perfectly you laugh long past the point at which others stop. It's the kind of laughter that is common in childhood, but rare among us adults. According to statistics, kids laugh more than 300 times a day. Adults? Less than 15.

So finding someone who elicits that kind of unbridled delight is like opening a gift. One you want to keep forever.

J was one of those gifts. We made one another laugh with ridiculous frequency for most of my 13 years in the mountains. We began to drift when she resumed drinking.

I didn't realize how precious she and those amazing other people were until now, when many of my friends have moved or drifted away, when I'm living in a new city and working to make new friends.

I realized this evening, as I wrote to her, that I haven't laughed that way since she'd visited here last fall. She was drinking then, but my son was here and it didn't swing out of control during those 16 or so hours. Robby still talks about that visit, the funny things she said and did.

You can't walk away from a gift as wonderful as that. And to turn your back on them when the laughter stops, when their presence no longer delights but embarrasses, when they begin the slow process of self-destruction, seems to break the unspoken contract that is a friendship. While it's not a marriage, friendships carry some of the same level of commitment. In sickness and in health. These words keep running through my mind.

So I sat down this evening and wrote that letter. I slipped into it gradually, telling her of my concern, which sprang from how much she meant to me. I told her my letter was written for selfish reasons - that she makes me laugh like few ever have, that I need her to keep me laughing, that she has to stay healthy for me, damnit. I told her many things, at first, because I knew writing them was the right thing to do, the right words to put on the page. But as I wrote, I realized how very true it was, how much she means to me, how much I have missed her and how much grayer my life would be without her. How much it saddens me to see her hurting, numbing age-old wounds with alcohol.

Could be that she won't write back, or call. Ever again. Could be this letter has cost me the friendship. Could be she sniffed out my lie at Christmas and wrote me off with the new year. I hope not, but even if she rejects the friendship, maybe she'll consider the words. That alone will make this letter worth writing.

I have somewhere this goofy picture of the two of us taken probably a decade ago. We are taking a break from a photography session in the mountains. The newspaper staff members were modeling that fall's new ski fashions. Robby was there, just 2 years old, decked out in a $250 snowsuit; that photo made the newspaper, as did a couple of me, and at least one of J.

In this particular picture (a candid not even remotely considered for publication), J and I are both grinning like hyenas. My mouth is stretched wide, exposing teeth and gums and my head tilted up, such that you can see up my nostrils (thankfully, clean). J's mouth is caught in an "oh!" Her hand is raised up and twisted around above both our heads; what she is doing I have no idea. Aesthetically, it is not our finest moment. But we are head to head, happy as hell.

Who took the photographs? Brad, of course.

How time has changed the course of these three lives.

I took that picture down from the wall of my Colorado Springs townhouse more than three years ago, when I had an experience with J similar to this Christmas. I pulled away then, turned my back, hoped it - or she - would just go away. Now I see how wrong that was, how delicate and precious friendships are, how reverently we should treat those characters who catapult unexpectedly into our lives and pepper them with life.

When I unpack those pictures from storage this summer, when hopefully we'll move into our new home, that dusty photo's coming out of hiding. Whether or not J reconnects with me, I'll find a patch of wall for it, a little place of honor for her and for our friendship.