Monday, August 3, 2020

BFF4EAE

On so many levels, I hate when people say someone lost their battle with cancer. First off, who lost? We did. The world lost. And if someone lost, then someone won. I refuse to give cancer the satisfaction of a win since in the end, the cancer is gone, too. And those rogue fucking cells have no ability to revel in the heartbreak they leave behind. 


All that being said, the world lost an incredible person today. The best person, in fact. And it really stings.


***


How many years counts as enough time to spend as someone’s friend? 5? 10? 25?

 

It seems to me that there is no amount of time that could ever be enough to share a friendship.

 

The memories of a 27 year friendship are endless: countless meals and cups of tea, hours and hours and hours of phone conversations (and polos), walks through the city, tears and worries shared, visits, sleepovers, meetups, messages, letters mailed, emails and texts sent, rides on the train, drives through 2 states, parties, drinks, pictures taken, hikes, adventures, theatre, new friends made, concerts, infertility struggles, pregnancies, miscarriages, births, parenting advice given, accomplishments celebrated, children’s videos watched over and over, and even diseases treated and survived.

 

And yet, there’s never enough time.

 

I look back on a 27 year friendship and know that we took advantage of the time we did have together. We talked, we laughed, we vented, we cried, we anguished over all of the unknowns of the future, knowing full well we had such little control over what was to come.

 

Still here we are. The moment is here. The one I’d pushed away because imagining it is like imagining yourself without a part of your body: it’s impossible.

 

I know that we are so lucky. Particularly, me. I have been so lucky, to have been given a friend who both sought my advice and gave yours honestly to me (even if I kept the clear glasses or went with the tacky pink and purple tie dye). You shared and listened. You always showed up. Always. Answered the phone or jumped on a train (okay, maybe you didn’t jump, but you got on it). A bris in a snowstorm or a bowling birthday party were just 2 states away.

 

Remember how we used to meet in WSP in the West Village?  We went to the pop shop or had lunch at cafĂ© dojo, and then ran after Gwyneth Paltrow for an autograph when we spotted her minding her own business. Or when I’d come to Long Island and you picked me up from the train station in the Pontiac sunfire to go to the beach club and then listen to Rent or Les Mis in your room before I got back on the train to go home.  

 

Later, I wore my doc martens to see your dorm room on the quad (stepped in those damn ginkgo berries and spent forever pouring bleach on them cause I thought it was barf) and we’d go to smokey joes and pretend to be 21. We made mixtapes. We blew our hair dried straight and go to a random NYE party – who was that guy I kissed? in the burbs, right? – and we danced and whispered and giggled and were only a tiny bit hungover the next day.

 

Arms linked, we still met in the city, after college, before and with kids. We took any opportunity to steal a few hours together, catching up, telling the real stories, the important stuff about boyfriends turned husbands, and families (extended families) and friends (or juicier, non-friends), the lack of sleep or parenting trials of the moment. We shared recipes (I still think of you when I make the strawberry spinach salad and the puff pastry brie appetizer) and went out to eat with our husbands. We sat next to Bode Miller and Morgan Beck in the 11th row at Book of Mormon, and stood in a giant stadium to see Beyonce fly through the air and we sang at the tops of our lungs.

 

Weddings – dress fittings and bachelorette weekends. Pregnancies and babies – so many memories that make me laugh looking back. No question our children were so wanted.

 

And unbelievably, we went through cancer together, me first, thinking I had been able to take it for the rest of us, and you after. I was so so angry when I got the news from Naph. We were both young and had so much more to do. Unsurprisingly, we both turned out to be sensitive in mind and body, with a list of treatment side effects a mile long. 

 

You made changes and took care of yourself and your family. You went back to school and realized your dreams of being an artist. In between the scans and the appointments and the markers and the fucking trials, you thrived. You played tennis. You made travel plans. You published a book! You wasted no time.

 

And in the meantime, we still made seeing each other a priority: lunch in the city or a sleepover at your new house, you could not have been a better friend to me. You were always someone I could trust with secrets, with fears, and to share in my joys, too. Friends who stand by your side for almost 3 decades are not easy to come by. Thank you for being an incredible friend to me. I hope I was able to provide some degree of support for these past 8 years, especially, on this roller coaster of uncertainty.   

I’m beyond grateful for the 27 years we’ve had. I’m furious for the years that were stolen from your girls and promise to do anything for them. I’ll share all of our memories (some will have to wait a few years though), saved letters, and show up for them. I’ll remind them how proud of them you are, on a field or on a stage, or as a friend, how endlessly you love them and that you wanted nothing more than to be with them always. I will make sure they know you would have done anything to see them into adulthood.

 

We were supposed to be glamping this week.

 

I miss you already.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for this Mia. These are priceless memories that will live on forever. She was so brave and you are too.

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