I Didn't Forget

Today would have been the 58th birthday of a very dear friend of mine. Her name was Linda. Linda was eldest of six children born to a circuit court judge and his wife in the great state of Indiana, where I also happened to be born but am not actually from. I was born in the Hoosier state because my father was stationed at Grissom Air Force Base in Kokomo when I made my grand entrance, but through no fault of my own I was raised all over the USA. Later I went to college in Indiana, met my husband, fell in love at first sight (yes ... it happens; I'm living proof), and after we got married, we lived there for twelve more years. We lived thirty miles from Chicago and that's the part I liked the best. I love Chicago and would live there again if I could, even though the winters there are so cold, it makes me want to cry just thinking about it. All four of my children were born in Indiana too, just so you know ... at the same hospital, delivered by the same doctor. The labor and delivery nurses at that hospital knew to expect me every two-and-a-half to three years from 1980 until 1989. Just a bit of trivia there for you.

But enough about me. Linda's baby brother Jim, who is now a loving husband, father, and incidentally a lawyer, was a student of my husband's before he was my husband (my husband, that is ... who's on first?), and from eighth through twelfth grade played point guard on the high school basketball team coached by my husband both before and after he was my husband! Jim stood up as a groomsman in our wedding. I'm going to tell a story involving Jim and his family tomorrow, but today I need to tell you about his big sister, my friend Linda.

What a doll she was. Such fun to be with! So happy, so positive, so opinionated (in a totally good way). You always knew where you stood with Linda. She didn't go all smarmy on you and make you wonder what was REALLY going on in your relationship, like so many (well-intentioned I'm sure) people have an alarming tendency to do. She wasn't easy to offend. She had a charming transparency about her; she told it straight up and didn't dither. She was great to do stuff with, like shopping or going out to eat. That girl would go on an excursion at the drop of a feather off the hat you didn't have time to drop. She was always ready to go. She and I loved to shop, talk, and eat. We got in the car once (I was driving ... I know; scary) and embarked on a 45-minute ride to this restaurant we wanted to visit, which was kind of too near a state line, and before I knew it we had crossed said state line just because we were gabbing and not paying attention to where we were going! Notice I said "we" ... it was as much her fault as it was mine! Even if I WAS driving! I'll thank you not to snicker.

Linda had the most beautiful hair. She was not a beauty queen per se, but she was stick-thin and had the most gorgeous clothes and accessories (the result of all that shopping), and like I said, her hair was really something. She was the mother of four handsome sons but you would have thought she was just a little older than them, mostly because of that hair. It was nut-brown, long, straight, and unbelievably shiny. She kept it immaculately groomed and it swung, free and young and perfect, around her sweet smiling face. I can never remember seeing my friend Linda without a smile. Never.

When she was thirty-eight years old, Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a dire case; the doctors didn't hold out a whole lot of hope for a long survival. I remember one day she asked me to pick her up from one of her first chemotherapy treatments. She didn't like to drive after she'd had one because they were giving her some very strong drugs. After we got to her house, which was kind of out in the country, we sat in the driveway and she told me about what the treatments were like. She showed me the cap she had to wear on her head that they'd run cold water through or something, because the drugs made her head so hot, it felt like it would explode. She cried telling me these things, because she was afraid, but she was so brave. I'm crying now, thinking about how brave she was and how she looked when she showed me the cap.

A few weeks later my husband and I were going somewhere and we passed a freestanding Fannie May candy store. Now, Linda loved those Fannie May Trinidads. If you have never had one of those candies you should go online and treat yourself. They are so good it can't be described. Anyway, I directed my man to turn in at the Fannie May parking lot and I trotted in and got Linda a half-pound of Trinidads. We were only a mile or two from her house and I hoped she was home and that the candy wouldn't make her sick. When we pulled up in her driveway it was dusk and I didn't see any lights on so I prepared to write a note to leave for her with the candy. Suddenly the door opened and Linda's husband came out. He saw me and motioned frantically for me to come into the house, so I did.

Linda was in her bathroom, wearing her nightgown, sobbing uncontrollably. She had just taken a shower and had been combing her long beautiful hair when it began falling out. Huge gobby clumps of it dotted the floor and the vanity and clung to the sides of the sink. The clumps looked like dead kittens. Her lovely nut-brown hair, coming out by the handfuls. I held her as she sobbed and told me something I had never known: one of her greatest fears was being bald. And within a few days, she was as bald as a cueball. I guess that's one time I did not see my friend smiling, although I am positive that before I left her house that night, she smiled at me through her tears. Like I said, Linda was nothing if not brave. The next time I saw her, at church, she was wearing the cutest short curly wig and a huge happy smile, and a fantastic Liz Claiborne outfit. She always dressed to the nines, that girl. She knew her life was not a dress rehearsal ... there was only one performance, and this was it.

Linda soldiered on, endured many surgeries and treatments, had some time of being relatively healthy, then quickly suffered setbacks. In due time we moved away from Indiana for my husband's work. Although she lived for five more years after we moved to East Tennessee, I am sorry to say that I never saw Linda again. We exchanged letters and called one another quite a bit at first, but by that time she was so dopey with morphine to deal with her terrible pain, that her handwriting was nearly illegible. I still have those letters. Talking to her on the phone was like talking to a drunk person; I doubt she even remembered our conversations. As time went on, I got busier with my growing family and my contact with Linda became more infrequent, then dwindled to no contact at all. For the last few years of her life I had no interaction with her whatsoever. I was a lousy friend, and nobody say no, I wasn't. I was. I deserted her because I couldn't handle how sick she had become.

It was a mutual friend of Linda's and mine who called me in the summer of 1996 to tell me that Linda had gone to Heaven. She was forty-six years old. I was not able to attend her funeral, which is just as well. When Linda got sick, she said she just wanted to live to see her four boys graduate from high school. She accomplished that. She was gutsy and stubborn and just wouldn't let go until that youngest one had graduated. All her boys are now married and have children of their own. Linda's husband eventually remarried too and I hope he's happy. He was good to Linda and took care of her for eight difficult years. As it should be.

When I found out that Linda had died, I had to talk to somebody about it. It was bothering me so much that I had been such a terrible friend. How would I like to have a "friend" like the one I had been? I wouldn't. I was wracked with guilt and I needed some perspective, so in the end I sought the help of a professional counselor. I saw him three or four times, and although I don't remember everything he said to me, there is one thing he told me that I will never forget. He said, out of all the people in all the world, you and Linda found one another and formed a true friendship. Despite the passage of time and the change in circumstances and the geographical separation and the ravages of her illness, and even though I was certain I had "dropped the ball" with regard to Linda, he assured me that she had known I was her friend. I certainly knew she was mine. He told me to treasure that, and to learn from what had happened. I hope I have done that.

We get so little time with those we love. It isn't just that time passes so swiftly and responsibilities claim what little time we have. It's because so often we fail to connect when just a little effort on our part would mean so much to someone else. In the end, don't we all just want to be remembered? Not to be forgotten. Linda, I remember you. I remember your laughter, your smile, and the joy you brought to my life. God rest you, my funny, brave friend. I'll see you again someday.

Blossoms will run away,

Cakes reign but a Day,

But Memory like Melody

Is pink Eternally.

~Emily Dickinson~