My dear childhood friend Nancy was admitted into hospice today.
Regrettably this isn’t news that surprised me. I knew cancer had attacked her lungs and brain and had become increasingly aggressive this year. We spoke as recently as last month about the extent of her cancer, her increasing weakness, her anxiety and fear. She waffled from optimistic and nervous during that two hour conversation. My stoic Nancy cried when she told me she had given her beloved pup to a neighbor because she could no longer care for her Pookie. That red flag alone told me more than any words my beloved friend could ever have said. Then I cried.
Stubbornly I continued to hold on to the hope treatment would fix her. The doctors said she might still have three years she explained. But she also complained of not being able to read any longer or enjoy the simple things we all take for granted. Still I chose to believe a miracle would happen.
It was a lifetime ago in Biloxi Mississippi in 1957, we were feisty eight year old girls, all elbows and knobby knees, walking home from school. Each of us lugging a clarinet case along with our book satchels. One of us, not sure which one now, made a snarky comment about the other’s clarinet case. I secretly envied her case. It was red and white, mine a drab brown leather. We started calling insults to each other and before she turned off towards her home we were close to blows.
I remember I was infuriated by that tall skinny girl with the red bouncy curls, her cute dress and her smart aleck ways. Didn’t like her at all, but I was covertly in awe of her gumption. Years later she told me she had been a bit intimidated by me, the short, serious girl with the dark wavy ponytail, her blue glasses perched atop her nose.
Not sure how but the next day walking home we began speaking civilly to each other and found a common bond, maybe a dislike for some other unfortunate classmate? Who knows? All I do know is that that day began a friendship that has stood the test of time in more ways than either one of those small girls could ever have imagined.
We became inseparable all through the school years. Countless sleep overs, hundreds of hours of phone calls, Sunday school, parties, trips and holidays filled our years. We grew up together from giggling over coloring books to ogling Seventeen magazine, from school text books to secreted copies of Lady Chatterly’s Lover that we read aloud to each other sprawled across Nancy’s bed. Oh how we marveled at the risqué graphic scenes. We grew up together from the Toni perms our mothers forced upon us to ironing the waves from our long hair, growing insanely long mod bangs that all but cover our mascara caked eyes.
Once at a Christmas Service we sang a duet, Oh Holy Night, in our church choir, oh what I would give for a video of that. We were in school plays together and shared a love of drama, show tunes and musicals. Together we grew up from girl scout camp out songs like Kumbaya to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
We discovered boys together, practiced hairstyles and makeup together, double dated the whole time we were in high school. Experienced alcohol for the first time together. Smoked our first forbidden cigarette together. Together with our third musketeer Julie, we experienced the excitement and the angst of those teenage years. We played Ouija board late at night and decided we had been sisters in our past lives or maybe we had been witches in Salem. Always the drama queens, that was us.
We even survived teenage pregnancies together. Nancy was one of very few people who knew about me giving my baby boy up for adoption. Later that same year Nancy married and gave birth to her own son. She stood with me as my maid of honor at my own ill fated first marriage to the wrong man. She and I both knew even then he was not the one for me. We both endured bad marriages and later divorces. Though I moved 2000 miles away, we flew back and forth to visit each other countless times over 50 years. Thousands of miles never keep us apart.
Years later when Nancy met the man who would be the love of my life, my Gene, she immediately loved him and said to me. This is the one for you. As always, she knew just what I needed.
Completely different lives and careers did not make a hill of beans. There was never a time we did not connect the minute we talked over the phone or when visiting. We discussed our husbands, or sons and our careers, always advising and instilling confidence. How many times she consoled me, how many times we saved each other I cannot count. Now my chest literally aches because I know there will be no more calls.
What a path our lives took us down. I could write a book about those intersected paths. In my memoir Nancy is an important character and in the process of writing I have realized even more so what a beacon of light she has been throughout my life.
Shane, Nancy’s incredibly kind son informed me that my dear Nancy stopped talking two weeks ago. She and I had tried to have a conversation over the phone, Shane holding her phone on speaker as she slurred words in a weak voice that wasn’t hers. Me, on the other end of the line, trying to be optimistic and upbeat and failing miserably. After our conversation, Shane tells me she completely stopped talking. To anyone.
They say our loved ones completes us. And I know this is true. I would not be who I am today without my friend, who never once failed me. Who taught me what a true friend is. Our history is long and full of joys as well as traumatic sadness and countless experiences. My gratitude for Nancy in my life encompasses me. Never once did I question my love for her or hers for me. Never ever.