Yesterday, for an hour and seventeen minutes, I spoke to Rooomie, a friend from junior high days. She'd texted me the day before: MTF, my true friend since college, died last week.
MTF was a good friend who appreciated her friends. She hosted some of the best girls' weekends ever. She had a big, generous heart. She was a caregiver and a grandmother.
She was happiest when her daughter was born, writing that the rest of the world can go away, because I have her and that's all that matters. (I still have the card.)
The people she let into her life appreciated her snark. She was afraid I'd lost mine after being perforated; my mantra (The sun came up today and I was here to see it; by definition, it's a good day) offended her image of me.
Ever since I got to know her in college, she had trouble finding the bright side. Even though she had all the things I knew would have made me happy when we were in high school (very long, very straight hair; a pep team sweater; lunch with the cool kids) she told me that none of it ever made her happy. (I still find that hard to believe.)
She was a reader and a voracious consumer of information and most of that just added fuel to her general unhappiness. She was smart and loquacious and a delightful companion; we walked half the length of Manhattan, laughing.
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| Walked the High Line and watched as MTF offered to "take a picture of both of you" every 50 feet or so. |
She died at home, surrounded by the family that loved her the most. There is no funeral, no obituary beyond her daughter's Facebook post. She's gone.
There's a hole in my universe. It's not an unexpected hole; we're in our 70's, after all. But knowing it and feeling it exist on two separate planes.
Right now I'm kinda wishing I didn't like so many people.
Oh, boy, do I hear you. Losing our longtime friends is just hard. Losing so many friends in the past few years has been unconsolably hard. And, no, 70s is not expected. I expect my friends and I to go into our 90s, with banners held high. So many of my recent losses have been friends who I have made later in life, in their 80s and 90s, their lives examples of how to do it. They have given me hope, and I cling to that now.
ReplyDeleteThere will always be more life to live, until there isn't.
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Sometimes parting is just sorrow, even when the one you lose is sweet.
ReplyDeleteYup.
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