Last Sunday in San Francisco, having lunch with LL just before I headed home, she received a text from her brother, asking if she heard about Lou Reed yet.

Uh oh, both of us thought.

“Is this going to turn into The Weekend that Lou Reed Died?” I wondered aloud, before we started typing into our phones.

Indeed it did.

LL and I have known each other since we were 18 and have attended hundreds of music shows together. Receiving this news together was appropriate, as our dorm rooms — and later, apartments — resounded with the sound of Andy Warhol, Transformer … even Metal Machine Music. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that discovering Lou Reed felt like discovering hip, like discovering the possibilities of how you could think, listen, dress, move, play while becoming a brand new adult. My group of friends embraced the whole feeling of what we were hearing. We could feel, viscerally, the sounds transmitted directly from a unique and rapidly disappearing time.

What strikes me is how much I feel like Lou Reed is mine. He probably was the first musician that I loved in a very complicated way — no blind, school-girl crush there. I didn’t like some stuff he did (and certain lifestyle elements he embraced), and sometimes his decisions made me roll my eyes.

But oh, lord, the stuff I did like, I loved. And I loved him.

And now that fascinating world disappears from view even more, even faster. With all the death I’ve seen around me in my little life, crying real tears over a 71-year-old living on borrowed time is an achievement, a testament, a love letter.