7 Years

I don’t blog much anymore. Being so open and vulnerable is not easy but Laura did it so well. She was honest … always honest …  and it connected with people. She encouraged me to blog and so this is kind of like an offering. Some people place flowers by a grave to mark an occasion, some may share memories together or do something thoughtful and difficult like write a poem. I write a blog every year on the anniversary of her death. It’s my bouquet of flowers laid on the ground- a symbol of remembrance, an act of appreciation, a small way of saying “thank you for the gift of getting to be near you for your brief time on this earth.”

If I want this to be a meaningful gift and something that represents my relationship with Laura then I have to be willing to be brutally honest and uncomfortably vulnerable. So I’ll talk about my first mammogram last year. Her life and legacy is so much more than the illness that took it, and yet I of course thought of her and what she went through as I sat there nervously waiting for my results. It was my first one (a lovely 40^th birthday present for all women) and a few days after it I got a call that there was a mass of some sort and they needed to do further imaging. If you know me then you know that despite my best efforts at positive thinking and deep breathing … I was worried. I had to wait weeks for the follow up imaging. Enough time to distract myself with other things and enough time to thoroughly worry about every possibility. When it was finally time for the appointment, I made conversation with the kind technician and held my breath every time I was told to (and hoped the forced breathing might steady my shaking). Then I was taken to a smaller waiting room to see if the radiologist would call for the ultrasound. The tech had said that if they saw that it was nothing I probably wouldn’t even need the ultrasound. So when they called me back for the ultrasound my heart sank. As I laid there on the table I thought of what all of this was like for Laura- how vulnerable one must be with their body in these situations, the torture of uncertainty and the looming possibility of bad results. I could picture her so clearly sitting in the chair at the Cleveland Clinic, listening to the oncologist, asking hard questions (and asking again and again until he really answered them). In that moment as I sat across from my friend and watched her hold her jacket on her lap, I remember thinking how young she looked (she was only 33). As I continued to lie there waiting … I started to remember other things I had forgotten, meaningful conversations or funny moments we shared. After the tech was done with the exam she said “I’ll be right back with some good news.” I breathed a sigh of relief but decided to just lay there and wait. I thought to myself “I want to stay in this time of remembering Laura.”

Everything was fine and I walked out with a very different result than my dear friend had. I absolutely hate medical tests and dread going back for another mammogram this year, but something about the uncertainty, the vulnerability, the helpless waiting broke my heart open and out flowed not just difficult but beautiful memories of this person that I love and love to remember. Seven years is a long time and sometimes the years start to shift, blur and distort our memories and it can be hard to hold onto the details. I was comforted to find those memories nestled in my heart and grateful for their companionship when I was in a stressful place. 

I am far from that time and place when I looked into her eyes as she breathed her last, but when I tell the story the tears are fresh because the love has survived the years. My life has changed a lot since she sat in the pews as I preached but her openness to me and her model of what it means to be a friend has influenced all of my friendships since.  And so here is my bouquet, a symbol of my gratitude, a sign of my remembrance and a small and humble tribute to a great and beautiful life.