I’ve been catching up on my blog reading the last few days and I wanted to share something I read–something that moved me.
That’s Bryan. He’s in my writing program and he was the guy in the lecture hall with all the insightful comments. And also the guy at the late-night beer-drinking festivities with the wicked wit. And although I haven’t actually read any of his fiction yet, I suspect that it’s pretty effing fabulous.
Anyway, Bryan wrote about how he reacted to the death of a friend by avoiding it, and he ended his post by saying how sorry he is.
I know how he feels.
A few years ago, Girlish had a pre-school friend whose mother I knew from all the birthday parties we attended together. We weren’t close friends, but our girls were the same ages, in the same class and she and I were pregnant at the same time. We both gave birth to boys in June. We used to chat at birthday parties, and one time I made a joke about smoking pot and she was the only mother standing in the circle who got it. (I make inappropriate jokes at children’s birthday parties; I can’t help myself, and occasionally it pays off with a look like the one Christy gave me that day). We didn’t spend a lot of time together, but I’d had coffee in her kitchen; I’d laughed politely at her husband’s jokes.
Then, just after our girls started kindergarten at different schools, Christy came to Girlish’s fifth birthday party wearing a wig. She told my mom, who’s a doctor, that she had kidney cancer. Later my mom told me she figured Christy had six months—two or three years at the outside. A couple of months later I took Girlish to Christy’s daughter’s birthday party and noticed a small stack of books about dying on her kitchen counter. That might have been the last time I saw her. Not because she died—it was the last time I saw her because I never called her again.
How’s that for cowardly? I never even asked her about it. I wanted to know how she was doing; I wanted to offer some words of comfort, maybe, but I couldn’t bear to hear what she might say if I’d have had the nerve to ask her about it. She was my age! We both had little girls just-turned-5, and little boys just over a year. I imagined myself sitting on the end of Girlish’s bed, trying to explain that I would be gone in a while, and that I would never, ever be back. I pictured a photograph of me on my son’s dresser someday and him saying, “Oh, yeah, that’s my mom. I don’t really remember her.”
I say “I imagined,” and “I pictured,” but the truth is I’m doing that now. At the time, I don’t think I even dared imagine. At least Bryan said prayers. Me, I just shut all of it, and her, out.
So somehow, reading what he wrote about his friend—although it dredged up memories I might rather not revisit—made me feel just the tiniest bit better. Like my reaction wasn’t so much about me being heartless and self-centered, but about death being scary, particularly when it hits so close to where you’re living. About our fragile, precious time on the planet among the ones we love.
Would Christy have done better by me than I did by her? Probably. It wouldn’t have taken much, certainly, to be a better friend than the woman who never called you again. I hate that I was probably one of many friends who dropped away when she needed us most. But I like to think now that she might have understood it, that whatever wisdom death brought also allowed her to forgive.
At least I hope so.
I’ve just been totally snowed under with with work. Not paid work, of course, but writing stories, because, you know, it’s so lucrative. Happily, though, I completed my semester project last week, and I must say it has been a productive four months. I got along well with my advisor and I racked up four new stories, all in different stages of development. So, although I haven’t been around here, I have been writing, and it has consumed me.