I lost yet another friend this week.
To cancer.
Her name is Beth. She was a massage
therapist in her career. But she was more than that. A sister. A
daughter. An aunt, a cousin. She was everyone's friend, and she fed
stray kittens.
Our relationship was short, about five
years.
After I was diagnosed with my brain
tumor, she contacted me.
"I hear you are looking for people to
walk with you. I'll walk with you."
Honestly, when she first contacted me,
I could not even see her face in my head. Our paths
had crossed briefly and intermittently when Ken and I were attending
the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship.
But there she was.
So we went for a walk. And then we
went for another one. And then, after a while, she offered to gift
me a massage. Ten days before I had my surgery, we both imagined
Norman shrinking from the size and consistency of a walnut, to the
size of an almond.
After my surgery, I rarely saw her.
She was not part of the regular group that visited me.
A few years after my surgery, I found
myself with an extra ticket to the Motherlode concert at WWU. I put
it out on Facebook that I had an extra ticket, and we got to sit
together. I think that was probably the last time I communicated
with her until after Ken's heart attack.
I only heard she was sick right after
he got out of the hospital, and she was VERY sick by that time. And
she had been sick for a while. Cancer. Stage 4. Just a little time
left.
I never knew a thing about it.
I saw her three times after the day I
found out she was sick. Once, I brought a sandwich to her at her
house. She tried to pay for it. I told her, “next time, you pay.”
I called her to make plans again.
Sadly, things had progressed very quickly, and four weeks after that
sandwich, she was on her way to Hospice.
I entered her room, there was quiet
singing. I walked up to her bed, took her hand, got close to her and
said, “I brought you a sandwich, it's your turn to pay.” Her
eyes opened wide, and when she saw me, she smiled. Her lungs were so
filled with fluid, she hardly had any breath to talk. I had time to
kiss her hand, say thank you and goodbye.
