I’m an old guy. At 67 I expect to lose friends. In fact when I scan the obituaries in the local (digital) newspaper half the people listed are younger than me. That’s sobering, and when you get to my age you’ll understand what that feels like. But what I cannot come to terms with is losing friends much younger than me. And this year has been the worst. I lost one of my tennis, pickleball and fishing buddies earlier this year. The last time I saw him alive was at our normal Tuesday night pickleball group gathering at the park. He played one game and told me he wasn’t feeling well, that he was headed home. The next day I texted him a photo of a nice string of fish I caught and got the last word he ever told me, via text, “Wow!” A couple of days later he died of a heart attack. He was 57.
Yesterday, another friend in her fifties succumbed to cancer. She was one of my heroes and one of my protégés both. I worked for a big oil company and she worked for the big chemical company just down the road from our refinery. We were always at the same local events and became friends over the years. We both worked for our corporations for over thirty years never changing employers. When I met her she was a young woman with no college degree doing clerical and administrative work, but she was ambitious and wanted to do much more. So she took classes at the local community college and earned an associate degree in business. Then she started working on her bachelor’s degree from the University of Phoenix. It took a lot of time and effort but she did receive her four year degree. She was bright, positive and eager to advance, and advance she did. Her final position was Director of Governmental Affairs for the same multinational chemical corporation where she started her career as a secretary. She traveled the country and the globe in that role and was living the dream she had always hoped for.
I loved her, not romantically, but like the kid sister I never had. I always encouraged her as she worked to advance her education and career and told her I was the president of her fan club. She was blessed with stunning beauty, and in some ways that made her career advancement more difficult. I think one of the things she appreciated from me was friendship with no hidden agendas. I just wanted to encourage and support her. While her work path was mostly one success after another, her personal life was like the biblical story of Job. She took great care of her health, was always very fit and slim, but her list of medical issues was long and complicated. And her relationships were no better. I can’t go into detail here because she was victimized in such a rare and terrible way that it would identify her if I was specific. I’m not going to destroy her privacy, because she was a very private person and very concerned about how others saw her. But she was damaged deeply by a unscrupulous man in a bizarre scheme that left emotional damage even worse than the physical slings and arrows she endured.
And then, just as she was beginning to recover fully from the severe emotional trauma, she was diagnosed with cancer. It was a form of cancer that advances slowly but eventually morphs into a terminal condition. She told me it was pretty benign and very treatable. I believed that because I needed to, but the truth was much different. In her case the disease went rogue early and there was no earthly hope for a cure. She continued to maintain she would beat it until her last day, which was yesterday. She was 58, and she’s gone. I’m a person of faith and I believe I will see my two friends again but I still grieve their passing. I’ve lost others, it comes with the decades I’ve been around. But losing these two hit me much harder than most. Especially her, she worked so hard to get to where she was and then life bludgeoned her with a ferocity few of us will ever experience and that I’ll never understand. The emotional and physical assaults she suffered were truly unimaginable, or at least unimaginable to me, a guy who has led a tranquil and happy life.
Just as I still have my fishing buddy’s last text on my phone, I also have hers. She said “Love you friend!”, followed by a string of sweet emoji. It has been months and I can’t delete his. And I won’t delete hers. And I know I will be able to read them some day without crying, but not today.