In the Face of a Friend's Death

It's all so fast. Last week she thought she might join us at a party. She had one more radiation treatment to go in her two-week course. The spread of her lung cancer had only been diagnosed a few weeks earlier. When she went suddenly and unexpectedly to the hospital, everyone was shocked. We all thought she would have to go to a nursing facility and were making plans on ways we could visit her and cheer her up. We knew she would probably never go home BUT she would be alive.

Suddenly it isn't that way at all. In less than a week in the hospital, she is on hospice care. We know now that the hospital will be her last place on Earth. Her children and grandchildren have all flown in from their different cities to spend her last hours with her.

She has been my friend for 75 of my 80 years. The things we have shared together. Trips! Parties. Parents. Family. Deaths and marriages and births. Lunches and laughing. Dinners and laughing. Sadness and crying. But why hadn't I spent even more time with her? We always think we have forever to spend another day. Suddenly, we are wrong. There are no more days.

Part of me thanks God that she will not have to suffer long. Part of me cheers that she won't suffer the indignities so many other people I have known have gone through on their way to another place. But the selfish part of me just says, "NO!!!!" I want her here. I want to hear her voice on the phone. I want to hear her laugh. Her staunch political opinions. Her everlasting candor and honesty. Her opinions. The way she never put up with anyone's nonsense. Her twinkly eyes challenging you to be the best person you could be. Her understanding when you weren't.

It was a gift to have her in my life. I want to keep her here and feel so powerless. I'm grateful and angry.

Real friends are so few. I hope this helps me to cherish the ones that I have left. I hope I make my life a tribute to all she shared with me.