“You’ll like this,” she said, ruefully, taking another sip of her iced tea. Which surprised me, but shouldn’t have, really. My friend has had nearly 35 years to watch me react to things, and a friend as observant as she is should have some idea what to expect from a soul so familiar.
We were overdue for a catch-up, and this one was overshadowed by memories of her mother’s passing last fall. A badly timed bout with Covid had sidelined me then, at just the time when a visit to the hospital might have been appreciated. It kept me, too, from joining those who gathered for the final respects, at the same bit of ground where they’d buried my friend’s father just a year before.
And then came the swift autumn slide into holiday obligations and new year commotions and … well, it had been a while.
So, here we were, catching up, as old friends will, on a few dozen odds and ends – events, relationships, adventures, opinions. But between the stories and laughter and questions this time lay the great empty that comes to all of us, when the parent who has loved us longer and more faithfully than perhaps anyone else ever will is gone.
Gravestones for the dead are milestones for the living, and we all need to pause and gauge the distance … stretching behind us, looming ahead. My friend was about to read to me from one of those milestones. And we’d walked the long roads far enough together that she thought she knew what I’d say.
None of us have any way of anticipating the moments that forge a friendship. We meet people every day who catch our eye but not our conversation; who tread the same office halls or campus sidewalks but stake no real claim on any territory in our soul. Passing us at the restaurant door, sitting a few seats back on the plane, doodling across the table in staff meeting, they may even share, perhaps, our talents, our dreams, our enthusiasms … our lonely musings on the world.
But the eddies and flows of circumstances never bring us any closer, into those moments that illumine something, seal something, catch a firmer, lasting hold on our attention and affection. We nod and go on, strangers to each other and soon forgotten.
And, yet. Some seeds, unaccountably, fall on richer soil. They send down their singular roots, and grow. Moments accumulate. The years go by. And the next thing you know, you’ve had a friend for a lifetime. One who keeps making that real effort to nurture the long connection, and who knows, intuitively, what you’ll like to hear, over a sip of tea.
My friend likes to remind me that our acquaintance was born in a too-early-in-the-morning classroom, the first semester I taught English at a local college. That was the semester I became engaged, and to hear her tell it, my classroom conversation veered far too often toward the wonders of love … much to the vexation of students, like herself, who were either reeling from less successful romances or too-long deprived of any fresh amorous attentions of their own.
For my part, I remember her mostly for the sleepy look on her face and her gradual slide down the desk as my lessons-of-the-day consistently failed to excite her wary imagination. That, and the fact that she wrote wonderfully well for someone barely engaged in the subjects provided.
For reasons unknown, she came back the next semester. And for other classes, over the next few years. Somehow, gradually, we moved beyond irksome instructor and dozing student to a friendship grounded in long-distance correspondence and far-and-between lunches and glasses of tea. And now all that had brought us here, to thoughts of our mothers, rare women now gone … and to her prediction of a moment I’d appreciate.
The moment, she said, came the morning she arrived at the hospital to learn the doctors had decided there was little more they could do. They recommended hospice care. My friend was stunned, but gradually persuaded, though her mother was not. My friend signed the necessary papers, and the move was accomplished with astonishing rapidity.
They arrived at the care facility. My friend – dazed and reeling from the realization that the unimaginable was at hand, and that her failing mother was about to leave this life angry at the reluctant mercies of her daughter – was told, gently but firmly, that she was in the way. Could she step out into the hallway, while they settled her mother into the room?
She obliged, wandering out into the corridor. She leaned her head back against the nearest wall, staring off at nothing.
She felt tired and helpless … far from hope and alone. Her prayers had been flowing – hard, fast, and repetitive – for weeks, and now she had no more left to pray.
If she’d thought about it, she might have chosen to be mad at the One who was letting all of this happen. But she hardly had it in her to think or feel anything, anymore. Only cold despair was left, pressing in from every side.
She stood there for a moment, sinking into the wallow, mechanically processing the sounds all around her. Someone hurried past. “Like your shirt,” he said.
Her shirt? She realized she had no idea what she was wearing. In her hurry to get to the hospital that morning, she’d fumbled in the dark of the closet and grabbed the first thing her hand landed on – pulling it over her head and hustling out the door.
Now, she glanced down, curious and dreading what she might have on. Recognition came – and wonder – as her clouded mind reversed the upside-down view of the print on her chest.
“Be still,” it said, “and know that I am God.”
And in that moment, mercifully ... she did.
Yes, I liked that.
That was a very pleasant read. Thank you for sharing.