When your best friend has cancer; Long distance love

A few weeks ago, I posted about what to do or say when your best friend learns she has cancer. It seemed that many people read and took those words to heart, and I want to make sure that it is clear: I am speaking from hindsight. Much of this I got wrong. I wasn't really very good at it, but I tried to pay attention and learn from my mistakes. 

When you live five hours away, it's hard to give advice for the everyday. Impossible really. Susan was so lucky to have a strong church community, school community, blogger community, and some really awesome friends who organized her meals, her childcare, and her transportation when needed. She also has the most amazing husband, parents, and in-laws who stepped in. The only things I know about supporting your friend in person when they are in cancer treatment are these:

• Don't show up sick. Don't show up if you've been sick in the past week. Don't show up if anyone in your house is sick. Germs are the absolute worst thing to bring them.
• When you want to help - have an idea. Don't call and say, "Let me know what I can do to help." They shouldn't have to think about it. If you have a skill or an opportunity, then step in and do something. Don't put it off on your friend to think up something for you to feel useful.
• And please - don't say that her problems make you rethink your own life or make you feel badly for having less life threatening problems. It's annoying to be the barometer of how much someone else's life sucks.

If you live five hours away, it's easy to think that you are useless, and that's not true. In fact, it's a little easier for you to be that person with whom your friend can still be "normal." When you aren't seeing the treatment first hand, it's a little easier for you to be the one who can still call and ask for help with your uncontrollable three year old. 

You can be the one who still needs her. And trust me, she needs to still be needed.

It felt selfish to me - to call and cry to her about my problems. What I learned though, was that in crying to her about my problems, she knew that I still saw her as my friend, Susan. Not my friend with cancer. 

Again, it's about living. The more you focus on the cancer with your friend, the more the cancer takes over. She needs people to still be who they were with her so that she can still be herself. If the cancer is terminal, then you both know it's going to take her life in the end - don't let it take her being while she is still here and breathing.

There will be times when you want to know what is going on with her treatment, and that is alright. Tell her that you would like an update when she is ready to give you one. Remember that she needs time to process information from the doctors and to go over it with her family. She will tell you want she needs you to know in her own time.

Living apart doesn't mean that you never see each other though. Get in the car, on a plane, or on a train and get there. This is the one area where I don't recommend trying to maintain the norm. Get there. Every chance you have to see her that you don't take will be time that you regret. Trust me on that one. Get there every single chance that you can. Take your children with you so that they can know her. Spend time with her children so that they can know you. Be friends with her partner - after all, you chose the same person as the bomb diggity. Of course, I already adored Susan's husband, so that last one was easy, but you get the point.

The phone line only goes so far. Make your choices wisely. Sacrifice. Get there. Because if you are life long best friends, then you may be one of the only people she feels like she can stay in her jammies around. She knows that if she needs to nap, you will amuse yourself or wash the dishes. She knows that she doesn't have to be strong around you - that you can and will handle her pain and her sorrow - because it's what you do for each other.

You won't be doing anything for her that she hasn't done for you all along - it's just in the context of cancer now.

When your best friend has breast cancer

It's October. Tis the season for everything pumpkin and oceans of pink vomited upon every product known to mankind.

It's October. Tis the season for me to think about Susan twice as much everyday and remember the one equation my astrophysicist best friend taught me that I actually understood:

ACTION > AWARENESS

There isn't much that I can add about what you can do during October that hasn't already been said. Susan said it best, of course, and new voices are rising all the time to remind us that living with breast cancer isn't made any easier by us posting the color of our bras on Facebook or not wearing a bra on October 13. 

What I can add is something for the friends of women living with breast cancer. It's something that I've wanted to write about for years now, but I realized that I wasn't really that great at it, and certainly didn't have enough knowledge to fill a book.

I can tell you what I did wrong, and maybe think of something I got right.

In the beginning . . .

One night, your best friend calls you on the phone. She has a three year old and a five month old. You are pregnant with your first child. Conversations had turned from babies to breast cancer over the past week because her mother-in-law had just been diagnosed and was about to start treatment. With you being the child of a breast cancer survivor, she turned to you to answer questions about helping a family member and dealing with telling the children. 

Only this night, she says, "In my internet research about breast cancer, I found something. Something called Inflammatory Breast Cancer." 

"I've never heard of it," I reply.

"I think I have it," she says slowly.

Here's where you can go right or wrong. 

Wrong thing to say, "Oh, Sus. There's no way you have breast cancer. You have no family history. You're breastfeeding. You're only 34. I'm sure it's just mastitis."

No. Don't do that. Don't dismiss a friend's concerns. Don't slide down a tear filled slope of worry with them, but don't dismiss them. EVER.

Right thing to say, "Wow. That must be scaring you. Have you made an appointment to have it checked? Do you need me to go with you?"

Listen.

Support.

Encourage.

After the initial diagnosis . . .

There will be a diagnosis. A diagnosis is not answers. Let me say that again. The diagnosis creates more questions that you can ever imagine. It does NOT provide answers.

Your best friend will tell you the diagnosis even before she has fully processed the news fully herself. There will be silence on the phone. Stay in it. Stay with her.

Wrong thing to do next is pepper her with questions, "What will they do? Is there treatment? Have you told the kids?"

A question you could ask are, "Do you need me to come?" 

Right thing to do next is possibly cry with her. Calmly. It might be to curse. It might be to apologize for saying the wrong thing the day before. You won't know exactly until you - 

Listen.

Support.

Encourage.

The thing is, with a diagnosis of Inflammatory Breast Cancer in particular, everything about what you thought you knew of the future is gone. The appointment you thought would give you answers, the one where you get your diagnosis? That appointment only turns everything into uncertainty.

Living in uncertainty is one of the hardest things to ask someone to do. 

Asking a billion questions of someone living in uncertainty is never helpful. Don't do it.

Something right I learned along the way was to ask in the first couple of minutes of our conversations, "What do you want to talk about? Life or cancer?" 

Most of the time, the answer was "life."

Because really, what your best friend with a new cancer diagnosis wants more than anything? Is to live. 

So do it. Live with her.

Listen.

Support.

Encourage.

The picture

“Is that your real smile?” he asked as he raised his iPhone to take a picture of me.

I have never been good at pictures.  It’s as sure as a dog drooling at the dinner bell – the sight of a camera causes me to show all of my teeth, open my eyes as wide as possible, and throw my head back into triple chin territory.

“I guess. I don’t know. I’m no good at this.”

I wished he had snapped something while I wasn’t looking. Something covert. It was my fate to be the first bad picture of a woman he ever took.

We had just watched a parade of beautiful women walk past. Women who had spent hours in hair and make up for the fashion show that night. I had spent less than an hour, as I usually do, on myself. Hair in braids, glasses instead of contacts, minimal make up. I’m alright with that. It’s not a lack of self-confidence that makes me hate to be photographed.

I just don’t know how to look spontaneously happy.

Over the past couple of days, we had talked. A lot. I had been nothing but completely honest with him. I trusted him with things that I haven’t trusted in writing. We talked about relationships, addictions, dreams, and whatever else friends talk about when there are no children or time constraints involved. I never gave a second thought to showing him myself with my words, developing an image that showed the negative and the positive. 

But when he started looking at me, to preserve that image, I felt completely unsure of myself. 

Exposed.

Something's gotta give

Maybe I've told this story before, maybe not. As Christopher's birthday cupcakes sit baking in the oven, I can't help but tell it again.

It was time for a party. Susan's youngest was turning six. She called me up, like she did whenever cupcakes were in order, and asked me to tell her how to make buttercream frosting from scratch.

Real moms make the frosting for their child's cupcakes. From scratch.

Or something like that.

I start in with my "You let your butter get room temperature . . ."

Wait. You mean it sits out of the fridge? On the counter?

"Yes. It's fine. I promise. I would probably use two sticks. When it's soft enough, put it in your mixer and start to cream it. Watch it - when it's getting fluffy, then start to add your powdered sugar."

How much powdered sugar?

"Oh, I don't know. At least three cups. Probably four. Just keep adding it until you get the consistency you like."

Oh please. There has to be a recipe. Do you mean you are just making this up? You can't just make it up. 

"Alright. Hold on. I'll find a recipe."

So I did. I looked up a recipe and gave her exact measurements for the butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract. Then, I got to the milk.

"It says 2-6 tablespoons of milk."

Silence.

"Susan? You okay?"

SERIOUSLY? There is a big difference between 2 and 6 tablespoons of milk. This is a RECIPE. It's supposed to have MEASUREMENTS.

We laughed and laughed. Always the scientist. Always the artist.

She didn't end up making the frosting. She was just too tired. Within a week, she went into hospice care. And then we all know what happened.

I can't help it. When I make cupcakes, I can't help myself. Laughing at her frustration over my shoddy instructions. Crying over the fact that she didn't get to make the frosting.

*************************************************************
Something has got to give.

I have more to write about. Colin is hilarious. Christopher is thriving. My momma was just here for a wonderful visit.

It's just when I'm in this space, I can't help but keep coming back to Susan.

Maybe I need a change. A fresh start. A new design. Maybe just a whole new blog.

I don't know. I know it's alright to miss her. I know it's alright to be happy and to be sad all at the same time.

But dang. I'm ready for my fingers to write about something else. Such is the downfall of free form, rambling blogging.

WHAM. Done.

The therapy. It is tough. I'm often left all thought out, cried out, and tired out before I can open this page and begin to write.

But it's helping.

I'm supposed to be making connections. That's my long term homework. It's a hard assignment for me.

There are reconnections that I'm enjoying, and some that I'm not so much. It's good to get back to a friend you drifted from unnecessarily. A good friend.

But connections are hard for me. Trust is hard for me. Depending on someone is hard for me.

All I really want in life is to feel like I matter to the people I care about. It sounds simple, right? But it's not. There is this widely held notion that I cut off relationships with a cleaver. Just put them down on the chopping block and WHAM. Done.

It's partly true. I did call my ex-husband on Valentine's Day and tell him it was over. A seven year marriage. WHAM. Done.

But it's not like I didn't talk until I was blue in the face before that. It finally got to the point where if I felt like I was any less important, I would just drown.

I do try and tell people what I want or need. I do try and communicate. I think in the past, I've been too worried about pleasing people and not coming off as pushy or demanding. I think that I poorly communicated and then would just finally break. I also think that I had expectations far above what they should have been and then just plowed ahead to make my life meet them, whether the people around fit into them or not. Ahem, pushy.

It's just that there comes a moment when I can't stand one more ounce of pain and disappointment and I break. I lash out at what I see as the cause of the pain, and I break free of it. Not ideal, I know. It's how I have survived so far.

That isn't going to happen with Kevin. I know I matter to him. He shows me. He listens to me. He talks to me. We fight hard. We love each other harder than we fight. It is quite obvious that I am important to him.

And now there are children. There is mattering to someone, and then there is being a mother. There is no kind of being needed like the being needed of being a parent.

These holes I have are being filled. I know that I have to fill them myself too. I have to start mattering enough to myself, whatever that means. Or maybe it's that I have to give myself the right relationships to know that I matter.

I have spent the past several years feeling guilty that I didn't feel sorry enough for broken relationships and things people mistakenly blame on me. I'm done with that. I don't feel guilty. I'm not sorry. I'm incredibly happy. I have finally done what was right.

Just in case I needed affirmation on the decision that I'm done shouldering guilt and letting myself assume that I'm just an asshole - I had a dream.

I was in my old house. There were a lot more rooms than when I actually lived there, and they were full. Every room was full of people I was trying to take care of. I was roaming from room to room just letting people down because I hadn't been able to get whatever food they wanted or they were cold or they wanted a different view or whatever. I ended up back in my living room, drinking and crying when new friends walked in. It was Liz and her husband. They had come down from Brooklyn because they heard I had a great place to stay. She handed me a tissue while her husband went into the kitchen and got some more beers. Then, she looked around and said,

"Shit, Marty. Your old friends suck."

Harsh, I know. But dreams, at least my dreams, are often extremely exaggerated. The sentiment is there, though. It's time to make connections. Connections that I won't feel the need to WHAM and run from. It's way past time.

It won't because she was sweet

My Aunt May is dying. She is 94 years old and has been in a nursing home for a few years. She is the last of the Carter siblings for whom my oldest son is named. She is a fireball. She is strong. She is smart. And now, it is her time to go.

Over the past few years, I've experienced death in many different ways. My grandmother had Alzheimer's and experienced a very slow and difficult decline. She was the first family member or friend that I lost. I was sad but not destroyed.

My other grandmother, Honey, moved to California with my parents when she was around 90. I didn't get to see her much or talk to her in her last years. She was 97 when she died. She died in much the same way that her sister, my Aunt May, is going. She was just worn out of living. Again, I was sad - I lost a great champion in Honey. She believed that I was as close to perfect as God ever made, and I loved her dearly for her belief in me and the strength she taught me.

Next to go was my grandfather. He was one of my dearest friends. It was the first loss that sent me to the floor, knees buckled, tears streaming, and actual physical grief coming forth with no way for me to control it. He told me that he didn't want to go just days before he died. I didn't want him to go either. I was pissed off at God for a long time even though Granddaddy was 94 when he died. It wasn't exactly a surprise

Then, my daddy got sick. So very sick. Parkinson's and dementia took him slowly and cruelly. He died in February of 2011, and I felt relief. I felt relief for him and for my mother who was his primary care giver in spite of her ongoing battle with ovarian cancer. I missed my daddy for a long time before he died. I mourned his death, and I still miss him now, but again, I managed.

What came next was completely different. 364 days after my daddy died, my best friend, my soul sister, my person, she died. Gone. Left this world. Left her husband, her kids, her parents, her brother, and her friends. Some days I'm so angry. Most days I'm just sad. Often it feels like we are all just kind of standing still, holding our breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Susan is gone. What happens next?

What in the world are we all supposed to do now?

It's like that when someone young dies. You don't exactly make long term plans with your daddy who has a degenerative disease or with your 97 year old grandmother. But with your best friend of decades? You plan things. You plan trips. You plan things for your boys. You plan retirement. You dream together because you are peers. I can't imagine the plans that she had with her family.

What do you do with all of those plans?

I know I have to let it go. I have to send it down the stream.

It's just not that easy.

*******************************************************
Kevin and I made a trip down to Georgia for him to meet my relatives there. They are awesome people, and I wanted him to spend a little time with them. His favorite story to tell from that trip is about meeting Aunt May. We got to talking about my grandmother, May's older sister, and her nickname, "Honey." Kevin asked Aunt May why we all called my grandmother "Honey," and Aunt May replied without a moment's hesitation,

"Well it won't because she was sweet."

I love that woman. Thank you, Aunt May, for all you did in helping raise my momma to be the woman she is today. I wish you peace and comfort.

BlogHer 2012

Some time last fall, Susan and I had a crazy idea. I don't remember who said it first, nor does it really matter - what with us being of the same mind as we were.

"Let's go to BlogHer in New York. Let's do it. 2012."

We bought our tickets at the super earlybird rate and started making plans for our trip.

Honestly, I was done with BlogHer. It was too big for me. This is my little space, and not many people join me here. I'm fine with it just the way it is. I enjoyed BlogHer the years I had gone in the past, but I didn't feel the need to return.

However.

Susan shone at BlogHer. She was totally in her element. There was this myth that she concocted in her mind that I was the popular one in high school. One glance at the two of us in a crowd like BlogHer, and you would know there was no truth to that whatsoever. She owned the room when she entered. Confident. Friendly. Brilliant. Beautiful. Everyone noticed Susan.

I wanted her to feel that one more time. I wanted to make sure that she got to be in her element again come August. So I bought the ticket with my heart and ignored my head telling me it was fancy.

We made plans to have a handicapped accessible room because there was a strong chance she would be in a wheelchair. We made plans to be in said room a good bit of the time because there was a strong chance she shouldn't be around crowds. We made plans to cart in our own Diet Coke because BlogHer always ends up in a Pepsi place. And Diet Pepsi? No thank you. We don't do Diet Pepsi.

Then came February 6, 2012.

My first thought was to sell my ticket. She was the only reason I was going. But I put it off, and by the time I really started thinking about it, something inside me said, "Just go anyway."

So I am.

I'll be heading to New York City on Thursday morning. It will be three days with women who knew Susan and some women who know me. I don't know what to expect. I don't know if it will be hard, or if it will be healing.

It might simply be fun, like the weekend we just spent with Curt, Widget and Little Bear. There was sadness lingering, but we enjoyed being together so much that the sadness didn't prevail. I think Susan would have been proud of us.

So yeah. While the posts and tweets about clothes and shoes and swag fly by, if you think about it, say a little prayer for me. If you are there, please say hello to me. I tend to disconnect when the sorrow hits, and it's likely that you'll see me just standing around. Quiet. Glazed over. I'll be the one people tweet about as "aloof" or "snobby." But you know the truth.

I'm just wishing my heart had been right this time. I'm just wishing I was tackling this weekend with Susan.

LympheDIVAs and Liz Lange. In memory of Susan.

Yesterday, yet another of Susan's legacies came to fruition.

Susan connected Crickett's Answer to Cancer with LympheDIVAs, helping provide beautiful and necessary, but expensive, compression sleeves to cancer patients needing them.

It didn't stop there though. Of course it didn't. This is Susan I'm talking about. She then brought Liz Lange, who you might know best for her maternity line in Target, into the mix. Liz agreed to design a sleeve to be sold by LympheDIVAs with the proceeds to benefit Crickett's Answer to Cancer.

A couple of days before Susan died, we spoke about the sleeve. She was so proud of making that connection and helping women in need obtain the compression sleeves they so desperately needed.

This is a great day for Susan's work, advocacy, and legacy.

I hope you will help me spread the good news.

The work at hand

I honestly don't know how it can possibly be May already.

There are friends I have not seen in four months. New babies I haven't met yet. Phone calls I haven't returned. Emails I've ignored. Recitals I've forgotten to attend. This fog, this haze, has consumed me now for almost three months.

And yet, I'm better.

I guess me realizing how disconnected I've been is part of the being better. We can thank my patient, loving family and my awesome therapist for that.

Susan isn't coming back. My grief isn't going away. I have to find a place for both of these, and I'm getting there. Slowly.

If you knew Susan at all, even "just online" (which we all know she valued tremendously), then you know that one of the beautiful things about here - what drew people to her - was how she made you feel about yourself. She was selfless, kind, and even in her scientific socialness, she was a wonderful friend.

Now. Imagine that person was your best friend for years and years and heaped that love upon you like she did even her "just online" friends. Now. Imagine that love a million times stronger.

That's what is gone from my life.

The wake up call in therapy has been that I value myself so very little, and I spent a good part of my life surrounding myself with people who didn't value me either. Susan always valued me; she valued every living creature (I say as I shamefully admit I flushed a bully algae eater fish without a second thought because he was being a jerk to the other fish. Woosh. Goodbye.).

I get it now. Get, as in understand, not have adopted fully and graduated from all further therapy. I get that I have to start here. Deep within me. I have to realize that I wouldn't have had a friend like Susan if there wasn't something valuable about me.

Find the way to love myself. Sounds so trite and textbook doesn't it?

Maybe, but it's my calling now. Because when I can do that for myself, I can teach my children to do it to, and I want that very much. I want my children to know how valuable they are.

So much work to do. So so so much work.

April 13

Happy birthday, Susan.

I love you, and I miss you.

Two months

I can't do this.

Every time I come to write, it's because I can't do the happy anymore. Then, when I get a chance to write, I can't stop thinking about the people whose feelings are hurt because I miss Susan so much. As if that makes them less important to me. It's stifling me.

I can't do it. I can't not write about it. I can't carry it with me. I can't hold it in and keep acting like it's alright now.

Yesterday, we were at a birthday party and someone that I've met several times before but don't really know (yet) said, "I'm sorry about your friend." She knew the news because she read Susan's blog.

I was so happy to have Susan come up in a conversation. It felt amazing to run into someone who was thinking about her too.

I think that's why I still go to Twitter and do a search on @whymommy. I still stop by her blog and see if there are new comments. I still check the Whymommy Love Fest page on Facebook. It helps to know that people still think about her. Because I still think about her everyday. Time after time everyday.

***************************************************************
The house is almost finished. About a week after Susan's service, we started a major remodel on our house. Walls came out, and steel beams went in the ceiling. Floors came up, and new ones went down. There was so much painting. I thought the painter was going to just go all Murphy Brown on us.

The painter commented one day about how often Colin says, "Why?" Because, believe me, it is often. He then commented that I always seemed to have an answer for him. I don't, but I certainly try.

"Why, Mommy?"

That's where Susan got her handle. She loved loved loved that her children asked, "Why?" and she strove to always outlast them. She wanted them to be completely done with the chain of "Why" without her ever having to say, "Because I said so."

I try to live up to that. I fail. A lot. But I try.

**************************************************************
We have a new dog. Every time there is loss in my life, I tend to prowl around Petfinder, looking for the perfect pup to fill the hole in my heart. Yes, I know. It won't work. But dogs were just another thing that Susan and I had in common. We both love dogs and have been foster homes to English Setters and Beagles, and have adopted needy pups into our homes to become loving members of our families.

However, I really have been wanting a small dog, and the boys have too. They need to learn that not every dog is a 100 pound docile Labrador who will let them poke, push, ride, and sit on him. They need to learn to be gentle with animals, and Christopher really wants a dog that will sleep with him.

I found a tri-colored Dachshund through a rescue group in Wake Forest called A New Leash on Life (who were fabulous, by the way). After a couple of weeks, Kevin finally agreed to let me submit an application to adopt him. The only problem was that he turned out to not be good with small children, only older ones. So, they suggested Macy.

"She's a wonderful dog. A Chihuahua mix."

Um, no thank you. No Chihuahuas for me, please. But, I knew not to just turn her down flat, so I went to the website to check out Macy.

It's like my Chelsea come back in Dachshund form. I don't think there's a lick of Chihuahua in her - I think she is American Eskimo and Dachshund. It doesn't matter though. Just check out these babies.

First is Chelsea:

And here is little Macy Moo:

Not identical, but enough alike that it's really eerie.

She's fitting in very nicely. She and Gibby like to chase the squirrels together. She likes to sleep in the bed, but with me and Kevin and not Christopher (yet). She is a big cuddle pup, and it's doing wonders for my heart right now.

Peace that passes understanding

Most days I leave my grief right here. Whether I publish it or just save it for myself, typing out my words enables me to go about my daily life as though I didn't have my heart ripped in half on February 6, 2012.

To the outside world, I appear no more strange than I usually do.

Monday was different. Monday was Circle day. It's the first women's Bible study I have been a part of that Susan wasn't also attending, and often, I would call her on Monday afternoons and we would talk about what had been discussed that morning. Sometimes, I would take notes and send her an email with some verses that made me think of her or something someone said that I thought would be meaningful to her.

Monday was different. Monday was Circle day, and I wouldn't be sharing any of what we discussed with Susan that afternoon. Maybe that is why I was particularly raw that day.

Maybe I was raw because I feel safe among those women.

Maybe I was raw because in reality, it still hasn't been that long since she died.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

     Matthew 5:9

We started out by talking about what having peace means.

Susan and I had this conversation many many times. What does it mean to have peace when you are a young mother with terminal cancer? How is it possible to find peace when you know you are being robbed of decades you expected to spend with the people you love?

I couldn't help myself, and by the end of the lesson, I found myself in the bathroom sobbing. I'm not a public crier. It's not something I'm usually comfortable with. But among the women in this group, the ones who found me and knew what was going on, I could cry.

It felt safe. And it felt necessary. It was almost as if I needed to say to some part of my everyday life, 

"It's still not okay. I'm still not alright with this. The peace I can make with recent events is fragile and has to be rebuilt daily. Be gentle, world. It still hurts."

And they let me do that. I'm so grateful.

*****************************************************

Susan loathed for anyone to say that a person "lost their battle with cancer." She absolutely and completely hated those words.

This week, as I've thought about peace and Susan, it has occurred to me that to use the words "fight" and "battle" are altogether appropriate, but the idea that cancer "won" is not.

Cancer didn't win anymore than Susan lost. That cancer that was living in Susan? That bitch is just as dead as she is. 

Susan is, however, at peace. There is no more fighting. There is no more anger. There is no more fear. There is no more pain. There is no more sickness.

She has peace. 

She accepted God's will in her life. She fought for as long and as hard as she physically could, and then she made peace.

There is a big difference between losing a battle and making peace with your life.

January 11, 2011

Always 

I don't usually know what to say,
But I always will know how to listen.

I don't know the answers to your questions,
But I will search for you and validate your need to ask.

I won't blow anymore sunshine.
I won't hold back anymore tears.

Because you need to know these things:     
     I know the time will come.   
     I trust your strength.     
     I believe in your family.

And this is also true:     
     I ache with you.    
     We support each other, and we both hurt.     
     We are both angry.     
     We are both scared.     
     Neither of us needs to apologize for it.

Do you know that it is so hard to give to someone like you?     

I want to give everything I can to you, but you - you are always         
     Arms outstretched         
     Searching the crowd         
     Ready to teach, to give, to share.

It's hard to catch you without your arms open to give.
It's hard not to take from you all the time.

That, by the way, was a compliment.

I am the woman who will play it straight with you.     
No more sugar coating from me, I promise.

I am the girl with whom you always played straight.     
     There will never be pompous bags of sand with lit candles in front of my home. In your honor.

You are my favorite one.
The one who restored my faith in lasting friendships, time and time again.

I will stand as strong as I can for you.
Following your example of what a friend really is.

We will be always friends.
Always.

One month

Dear Susan,

Suddenly, February is over, and I'm back at the Presbyterian Women Coordinating Team meeting this morning. The first Monday of every month. The last one was the meeting I was in when Curt called to tell me that you had passed.

Now it begins. The time in my life when I do things without you.

February was just a jumble of days in which I wished you back to this earth with every breath I had.

March has to be the time when I start to move forward again.

The time I spent at home wasn't healing like I hoped it would be, but it was enlightening. I feel like I know what I want my path to be now. I know what I want for myself and my family.

Thanks to you, I also know that I can do it.

While I was in Mississippi, there were four planets visible in the night sky. I grabbed my daddy's binoculars one night and headed outside. Momma lives in the country now, so I thought it would be a great view. It wasn't. It was cloudy every night I was there.

What a metaphor for us and our home state.

I think of things like this - things that I want to tell you - and I tell them to you anyway. People have told me to still talk to you. That you are still with me. I'm starting to figure out what they mean by that.

I miss you, Susan. I miss you every damn day. But I know what I'm going to do without you now. I have plans, plans that you helped me make - plans that I know you are proud of me making.

I will be better. I promise. And I will find a way to make sure you are always with me.

Where it all began

It's like Facebook knows us. On my list of online friends, you are right under Kevin. Because you were the one I talked to the most. I still expect to see the green online dot appear by your name. At first, I wouldn't read the posts people wrote about you. Now I am searching them out, looking for any bit of newness. Something that makes it not be over. I go to Twitter and do a search on your handle and smile at the moms who are thinking of you when their children notice the stars. You are always in the night sky. You are always in nature. You are always with me. I'm going to Mississippi tomorrow. Our place of becoming. I'll drive by your house. By my house. I'll show them to my children. I don't really know why. Probably because you are always with me, and that is where it all began. Instead of where it all ended.

Threading it back together

When I had my first miscarriage in 2006, I grieved here on this blog. I poured my sorrow out through my words so that I could leave the pain here and try to get on with daily life.

It worked for me.

This time, I'm publicly grieving for my best friend. I'm laying out the pain, the utter agony, of losing the person I have had holding my hand through life for 25 years. Here are the pieces of my heart, shattered for you. Tread lightly among my words, for they are threading those pieces back together again.

Today, more people I actually see in real life sometimes read my words. I run into them, and I feel weird for smiling. I feel awkward for not breaking down into a puddle of tears. 

The thing is, by laying out the grief here, I am better able to pull myself together in real life.

Susan understood that. 

At BlogHer in 2008, she spoke on a grief panel. Most of the bloggers on the panel had blogged about personal illness or loss. Susan described what it was like to blog so personally about her cancer diagnosis and treatment while still maintaining so much privacy for her family. At some point in the session, I mentioned that I blogged to leave it behind me for the day. 

There is no point to that paragraph, other than the fact that it has been on my mind all day.

I am fine out in public. I have to be. It is my nature to smile, laugh, and make inappropriate jokes. 

The only time I am not fine is when I have reason to say the actual words out loud, "My best friend, Susan, died last Monday." Actually saying it out loud always get me. Hell. Just typing it makes me cry. Somehow, that very concrete admittance of the obvious just sticks in my throat. I know that not saying doesn't mean it didn't happen. I just hate saying it.

So I grieve here. Where I can wallow and hurt and cry and gnash my teeth. I will hit publish, be comforted by the wisdom and compassion of so many people who take the time to share it with me. Then I will close the laptop, get up, and go on with life.

It's far from fair, but doing anything any differently won't change the fact that she is gone.

A year of goodbyes

A year ago today, we buried my daddy.

Parkinson's and dementia had left him barely recognizable by phone. In person though, there was no mistaking his laugh, the twinkle of mischief in his eye, or the way he held my hand. He never stopped being my daddy.

This past year has been a blur of goodbyes to him. I thought, and I thought wrong, that I had said goodbye to him before he even left. I thought that since he slipped away slowly over time, that I was coping with his death before it even happened.

That, I've discovered, is an impossible thing to do.

Hospice isn't the place to say goodbye. It's the place to say, "I love you. I will be alright." It's the time to hold on tightly and brace yourself with your loved one so that they know that for as long as they are still breathing, they will never be alone.

Only in death can you really say goodbye. Even though he is gone, I keep having to say it to him. Goodbye.

I've been thinking about the idea of heaven lately. I'm supposed to believe in it, as a Christian, and I suppose I do, but I don't believe in any actual description of it. I kind of just have it in my head that it's a promise that after you die, things won't suck.

This week though, I've tried to convince myself of a more concrete vision of heaven. Somewhere over the rainbow bridge where my daddy and Susan's gram would be waiting for Susan to cross over and give them big hugs. Somewhere in a field where Watson, Kepler, and Chelsea would all bound towards her, greeting her with wagging tails and big sloppy kisses. Somewhere Susan could continue being Susan, just without pain or sickness.

I don't know though. It's just not coming to me.

Visions of heaven don't really help right now anyway. Right now, I just miss them. And that has to be okay for now. To just miss them. Daddy and Susan.

Everything there is to know

So this came in the mail today. A card that I ordered for Susan on January 22. Stupid slow post office.

I think that she knows everything there is to know now.

What everyday is

We are home now. Services for Susan were yesterday. It was a mass. The service in itself was hugely comforting. I loved being in a mass and experiencing what Susan has come to love in a worship service. I loved sitting right in front of the nuns who Susan adored. I loved the music that the music director chose for the service. And the fact that it was his very first day on the job? Amazing. He really did a wonderful job.

I did get to sing for her. Not a performance, mind you, but an offering.

Not many people know that Susan had a really pretty voice. That both her left brain and right brain were equally remarkable. Science and math? Not a problem. Poetry and music? Also right up her alley. She was all about the balance.

On Saturday nights, our youth group hung out. Almost every Saturday night. There was a house on the church property that was just for the youth. We would watch a movie, play pool, have a game of capture the flag, or just talk. Many evenings though, Susan and I would go to the piano, and she would sing harmony with me on the incredibly cheesy pop songs I wrote. Think Indigo Girls, but on piano, we definitely liked boys, and we probably giggled way more than they did.

Singing is something we did together. There weren't a lot of things that we both did. She managed the soccer team at school; I was in band. She was genuinely smart; I was just good at standardized tests. I cook; she does not. But singing and writing? We did that together.

In fact, I still have a journal that she gave me in high school filled with really terrible poetry that I wrote about being misunderstood and boys breaking my heart. In the front, she wrote, "From one closet writer to another."

Ironic that her words would become read by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

I'm totally rambling.

Here's the thing. I'm supposed to be coming out of this six month fog of worry and sadness. I'm supposed to be on track to getting things done around the house now. I know this. It's time to get better and get moving.

But today? The first day back? I get an email from Christopher's teacher at preschool. He's being defiant and wrestling at school. He won't keep his hands to himself and has no concept of personal space. It's not the first email I've gotten, and I have tried my best to work with them and help Christopher learn what is expected of him as he is growing up.

Of course, the first thing I would do after receiving an email like that is obvious. I would call Susan. She would talk me through what I should do. Not by telling me what to do, but by asking questions that led us to a reasonable conclusion.

Instead, today I just got pissed. I feel like I'm doing everything I know how to do for Christopher, and for freaking holy biscuits' sake, I'm not at preschool with him. I cannot control his behavior. I cannot be with him 24 hours a day. What is the teacher doing? Why is he acting out there? That's what I want to know, and I'm ready to go in on Monday for a conference with both barrels aimed and make an ass out of myself.

Susan would talk me down from that. Now I have to talk my own damn self down. I don't want to. I want to hear her say that it's going to be alright. That I'm a good mama. That Christopher is a good boy. That having a hard time at school is normal sometimes and that we will find a way to help him.

Why is it that the first day home has to be a day when I really really need her? Oh. Right. Because that is what everyday is. Damn.

For real. Tell me this gets easier. Even if you're lying, just go ahead and tell me that today.

For Susan

1. His Eye Is on the Sparrow
2. 
   
3. Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
   Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heav’n and home,
   When Jesus is my portion? My constant Friend is He:
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
   • Refrain:
     I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free,
     For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
4. “Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
   And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
   Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
5. Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
   When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
   I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
   His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

~Civilla D. Martin