This blog entry is mostly about my friend Michele. Not about the sweet fellows you see below. I just put this picture on here because I love them, too, I like the photo, the show was great and I wanted a picture for this entry.
My best friend is in the final stages of cancer and she is only 46.
This is really hard to take and I may not be writing much in the next few weeks.
I want to spend as much time as I can with her because she hasn't got much left and I will miss her a lot when she is gone.
The list of loved ones who have left this world before me is way too long. It just isn't fair.
As always, the boy friend is MIA and now I am left to deal with my feelings about Michele, shovel the driveway in spite of my sprained elbow, wrap all the gifts for the kids and stuff the stockings some time tonight, after I visit Michele.
I'm trying hard not to say it, but I am really not fond of this holiday.
December 19 was the 10th anniversary of my childhood best friend, Phillip's, death.
I will, as usual, be alone on Christmas day, boxing day and likely most of the two weeks after it, other than when I am visiting Michele.
Michele is the image of wonder. She is so strong, so real, so brave and so very sick. I can't stand to see her in so much pain but I have to be with her.
It hurts so much to watch her go and leave her perfect loving husband and son, especially now that she has gotten her life together so well and overcome so much.
Did I mention it isn't fair? Did I say it pisses me off?
I'm trying to hear everything she says to me and to really listen but it's just not getting through the anger. I want to hang on to every second, to every word, gesture and sigh but it's passing fast.
As always, she is more worried about me, her family and her other friends than she is about herself.
She has mostly made her peace but she sometimes sways into the angry place. That's fine with me. She can say what ever she wants to me and I will always love her. Just as it's been for the 27 years we've known each other.
She's known that she terminal cancer for about three months. They told her she had about three months when they found it but she didn't tell me until last night, although we saw each other about two months ago at something I was covering.
She said she had something she wanted to talk to me about and I hate myself for not making the time to listen more carefully. This job has devoured any opportunities for making deep and lasting friendships like the one I've enjoyed with Michele but I like it that way. I'd rather stay busy than think about how lonely I am or try to build the layers of experience and feeling that we shared with someone else.
Michele was my closest friend and frequent companion from about 1978 to about 1987, when I left for Sudbury and Journalism school. We did keep in touch but it wasn't the same.
I moved up north and got busy having kids and a crappy marriage. Days turned to weeks, to months and to years. Even when I came back to the Sault I couldn't bring myself to renew that tie with her.
And now it's too late.
To illustrate our friendship, let me relate an excerpt from our long conversation last night:
me: "I can't believe I let you slip away for so long. I can't believe how many other people in my life have simply drifted away with little effort on my part to keep things together. Is this what I have to learn from this... it didn't have to be this way, you know."
Michele: "Yeah, no kidding. I mean, if I'm going to have to die just to remind you to keep in touch with your friends more, that really stinks."
me: (laughing through tears) "I love you Michele and I will miss you more than you can ever know. With you gone, who am I going to compare myself to and feel normal beside?"
Michele: Raspberry.
Yes, there is a little voice in me that says it should be me instead of her. Something that wants to make a deal so she can stay and live. Something that would desperately give almost anything to have her be okay -- well, as okay as she ever was, anyway!
Maybe I will write more about this. Maybe I won't.
She said I should but it feels a little too personal. A lot too real and too immediate.
Well, time to head over there.
But, speaking of friends, here is one more picture of two friends -- again, just because I love them, too and because I like the picture.