Requiem for a Friend

We didn't protest, nor did we hold back. We watched them having sex, they watched us having sex, although we didn't touch them and they didn't touch us -- just watched and did it at the same time - the last sexual interaction I ever had with my friend. (Later my girlfriend said she didn't know I'd ever had a sexual relationship with my friend -- and I ended up telling her the entire story.)

She eventually married, and had three daughters, only two of whom lived. We were again living in the same area when her first was born -- or rather -- when her first was stillborn. They had fetal monitors on while she was in labor, and when the baby began to show signs of fetal distress, they immediately began an emergency C-section -- but it was too late. The umbilical cord had somehow become wrapped around the baby's neck, and before they could complete the C-section, all indications of life had ceased. From a trouble-free pregnancy to death in literally seconds. My wife and I were there just a few hours after being called, both of us just holding her as she cried the tears of grief that only a mother who has lost her child can know.

As is common to all of us as we get older, friends remain friends, but as we move physically apart, as our lives go different directions -- sometimes we don't see close friends for quite some time. A year ago, just before Thanksgiving, she called and asked what plans we had. She said that her family was all gone; her father and mother had passed, her daughters lived a long way away, her brothers and sisters were a long way away -- and Thanksgiving was a time of family and I was the one "family" member she still knew was close. Unfortunately, we were out of town, and weren't able to include her in our family time. It may have been the time she also informed me that she was heading into hospice. Some time, not too long before then, she had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She had accepted this as her fate, but what she didn't know was that it was also to take her memory. That conversation where I had to turn her down may have been the last we ever had where she physically knew me. Her loss of memory; Alzheimer's, confusion, dementia -- whatever you want to call it -- accelerated rapidly. I went to see her, just a few months later, and just a month before she died. Although she talked about the great memories of being a kid at the cabin in the mountains, playing with me among other things, when asked if she knew me, she didn't know who I was.

My friend believed in the equality of all. She spent her life trying to help those who needed help; those who were downtrodden; those who, due to no fault of their own, were born in the wrong country, the wrong time, the wrong location. Working repeatedly in another, impoverished, country, I recently found out that those people whom she had worked tirelessly for to try to improve their life and circumstances, consider her a Saint. To me, she was just my friend, whom I will never see again, at least not in this life.

Rest In Peace My Friend.