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 40th
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.
