Another Sad Goodbye

Friday is usually a pretty laid-back day around here, but for a bevy of reasons, this past one was a bit of a mess. My Beloved - who is a full-time college student - had his one class canceled but had a few appointments to take care of. I also had some running around to to, so much of the early part of the day was spent just missing each other. Around lunchtime, he came home just as I was about to leave and handed me some pretty crazy news: he'd just found out that our friend Carmen died last month.

Wait...I just talked to her, I said. But when I raced to my phone to find our last text communication, I realized it was actually in October. I'd just seen her, though, I thought, in the grocery store with her daughter as I was shopping with my son. But my son reminded me that our short visit was actually in September. Instantly, I felt like THE worst friend in the world.

Carmen is the wife of our mechanic. Whenever something is up with any of my family's vehicles, she is usually the smiling face we see when we go to pick the cars up. She was as tall as I am (6'2") and ran in college just like me, so we always had athletic stuff to talk about. Always smiling, her love for her family was obvious, as something about at least one of her four children usually found its way into our conversations.

Since she restarted treatment, Carmen had been hospitalized a few times and I'd call/text to see if she needed anything or to chat. Once, she asked for lemon bars and sunflower seeds, which made me laugh. She had a knack for doing that.

But my "How ya doing?" calls turned into texts and the texts soon became fewer and further between. I flat out fell off. No excuse, really - other than life doing its thing. Blink and months passed, it seemed.

So Friday's news was like a punch in the gut. My own guilt aside, I kept thinking of her children and family now facing their first holiday season without her and I remembered the fear in her husband's voice when I'd talked to him that night she was admitted. Mostly, I remember being that family member and having to face that stone-cold reality that life as you know it will never be the same again.

That void that is left when someone close to you deteriorates and dies from any disease is never quite filled. I was 25, not 16 when my mom died and I have never lost a spouse to this disease, but I can empathize so very much. The idea of that raw pain so close to the surface is a hard one to fully fathom, but once you've been there, you understand it in a way that makes you hurt like nothing else really can. Hard to explain, but it is just the same.

Rest in Peace, Carmen.

Too Young

Yesterday while surfing FaceBook, I discovered that a friend I went to high school with passed away. From the comments, I found out that she had been ill for the past four years, but no other information about her illness was posted. Many, many people expressed great surprise that she had been as sick as she was.

We were never very close, but finding out about her passing really rocked me. Her mother - who was a pretty good friend of my mom's back in our high school days - died of BC about two years ago. Her father use to be my boss. Her brother and I ran on our school's track team together as well. Again, she and I weren't particularly close, but our families had a connection - and we were only four months apart in age.

I knew that she had married a minister and they lived in Maryland with their four children. I did see her at her mom's funeral, but only for a quick offer of condolence and a hug. The last time we really chatted was at our 10th high school reunion. Our 30th is in two months and it really saddens me to know that she won't be there.

Reunions stir up all kinds of mixed emotions for me. The first reunion I ever went to was my mother's 30th high school reunion in North Carolina. My dad had a project due at work and could not take the time off, so I was her "plus one." I still have the group picture the EJ Hayes High School Class of 1961 took just before dinner. I take it out every now and again to see if I still remember where my mom was sitting and to study her face for any signs of illness. I do that because six months after that photo was taken, my mom died from the cancer she didn't even know had returned. Brain mets took her away from us almost three months to the day after her 49th birthday.

My 20th high school reunion took place about a week after my own breast cancer diagnosis. When I look at the photos we took that night, I see a happy, smiling me posing with friends I hadn't seen in a long time. But I remember that I spent the entire night wondering if I would be around for the 30th reunion. I was terrified that my child would be looking at the group picture we took that night, scanning my face for signs of illness.

Now here comes my 30th - but I'm not so much thinking about myself as I am about my friend and her family. 47 is too, too young to be buried. It's too young to leave a relatives and friends behind to grieve. It's too young to leave loved ones alone, struggling with the absence. Thinking about her family and what they are facing makes me remember my own when my mom was no longer here.

My dad was also 49 when his wife died. Although I wasn't a little girl that needed to be taken care of (I was 25), there was a definite, palpable void my mother's death created in the house. I often tell friends that it was so, so hard at 25 that I don't think I could have survived had it happened 10 or even five years earlier. But that hardly compares to the thoughts I have today at age 47 about how my father at age 49 even dealt with the death of his life partner.

If my Beloved were to just be gone tomorrow, I don't think I would be able to function. If we had children together, I have no idea how I could possibly care for them because I'm sure I would not be able to do much more than breathe - and that's not hyperbole at all. It's just too big to even fully wrap my head around.

Today, while still trying to come to grips with the death of another person in the prime of their lives, I think of my dad, my friend's husband and her dad as well, as aging has made me empathize a whole lot more with how dealing with the loss of a spouse can probably come close to totally paralyzing a person. 

What do you do with that? How do you get up the next day and not be angry at the world? How do you hold it together after the arrangements have been made and the concerned friends have stopped calling to see if you're OK? How do you just go on without them?

I simply don't know, and I'm so very saddened by the idea that anyone has to figure that out.