It's Really About Those Left Behind
In the end, it is always about those left behind. This we always know, but as the throws of life prove to us (every time) we never remember it until an end has arisen. Every. time.
In 2013 I met a woman named Barb, and when I met her she was recovering from just having discovered a cancer the size of a football in her leg. A football. A fucking football. Barb with her three kids, a widower herself, a new husband with two nearly grown teenagers, and a suburban house. When we met, she was just starting her home daycare up again . . . her Dad got certified so he could help her, and her family moved the daycare chaos up to the main floor since the surgery and cancer made walking up and down the stairs to the basement difficult on a good day and near impossible on most.
I hadn't been married a year, when Barb and I met. After that January meeting we saw each other again in the spring, after I helped moved a friend up there. There was a party and she remembered my red pepper allergy, went through great pains to make a dip tray (riddled with veggies) I could eat. We doubled over laughing when she realized the taco flavoring mix would bust a move on my allergies . . . I told her--like I did many times--to not beat herself up. She had radiation brain, which she should milk more. Forget to pick a kid up? Radiation brain. Forget to turn the oven on before you pop the chicken in? Radiation brain. Forget to wear a bra? Radiation brain.
She would cringe at my alluding she forgot to wear a bra . . . she didn't, at least not in those "early" days.
As the days turned to years, Barb hunted me down on Facebook--as mutual friends said "B, you sure you wanna do that? Nessa's political crazy." Well, she never unfriended me over my militant politics (a word others have dubbed me, not I-I say). Though, during election season I hear that she avoided Facebook knowing I would be blowing up like a '72 Ford Pinto.
Then one weekend we schlepped up to her husband's cabin in New Hampshire. It was the beginning of fall, the leaves were on fire, my marriage was already rocky, and the retreat was everything we needed and didn't need all at once. There was a girls tradition at the cabin to subsist on gummy bears and mac n cheese for days on end. I high jacked that with acorn squash baked with butter and raw sugar. Since it tasted like candy--granted a moderately healthier version than the bags of Twizzlers and gummy bears scattered accross the cabin floor--it was dubbed an acceptable substance for cabin weekend.
During that weekend Barb and I went on a long, meandering walk on the road around the lake. As ducks clucked for us, and the sky began to drizzle, as we shared secrets of life, our own misgivings, and the stains of our pasts. As we climbed those steep and not-so-rolling hills, her pinky toes were a little numb from her shoes. I side-eyed her and said "you need some better shoes . . ." Her response, and I kid you not, "But, I like my neon pink sneakers Nessa. I'm not working out without neon pink sneakers." Laughing, we barely made it back from that walk before the skies really did open up. I snapped a pic of us that day, and she'd come back to haunt me if I blasted it here . . .
When I finally left my husband, she didn't know it all (no one really did as I kept more than I should have to myself), all she said was "I know you don't believe in divorce. Something was bad. Bad . . ." and then she diatribed about how sad it was that I lost Ripple in the split. She made mention of this pic, taken a day before I headed up to her cabin in the woods, as it was a fan favorite.
Right now, I'd give a few things short of everything to have ma petite chien noir on my bed with me.
Like I said, the days became years and leg cancer turned into "angry kidney" that really wasn't a kidney infection but rather an aggressive cancer growth crawling up her spine. And kidneys. And the lungs. The lungs are what finally called the uncle flag. Years later, miles into the fight, and endless hours of struggle along the way.
Another friend made comment today that it feels like yesterday that I posted headscarves I had made for Barb's tribe. She was about to endure chemo, and since we were scattered throughout New England and me in New York I thought it was the most amusing thing I could do. I used some hunks of Parisian map fabric, some turquoise and yellow print I had leftover from a quilt, and scores of black and teal ribbon I had picked up in Turkey the summer before. That November I was off to Antalya, and I posted my pic from the plane (as she started chemo that Friday). Somewhere in there I sent her a dress too, one from bamboo knit in a charcoal grey . . . I sent a note that when one endures chemo one should not have to feel like crap on a cracker while wearing sludge. She was tickled. I never saw her in that dress, but I hear she loved it and wore it often. I hear that her and her kids fought over a hat I knitted her and the scarf, for which she often said (after loosing her hair) "Isn't this hat/scarf meant for me . . . the sick one?" Apparently, puppy-dog eyes followed . . .
All along she had been so worried about me. My being alone, my prolonged Lupus flare from hell, and when her and her Dad came to the city last October she said "Nessa, you have a huff and puff when you walk and breathe. What's going on?" That six month battle to finally get diagnosed is a story for another day . . . but, as with everything else Barb was always worried about everyone but her. I ended up at the hospital for a day, not long after that, with a kidney blaring the entire library of Guns N Roses and chest pains causing my stare in the face of insanity resolve to fade. She started blowing up my phone, very upset, because I didn't call or notify anyone . . . she was so concerned I was alone. I told her I had been through worse alone, and then I said I doubted this was that detrimental. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't . . . maybe if someone had been physically with me, like she kept yelling via text, that I would have gotten answers when the leaves were alive with fire and not long and distant memories leaving grey trees in their wake.
Barb kept those messages alive, always worried about her single friend living alone in the city. I don't think that part scared her. I think the part about me having the Lupus hell worried her the most. She was like that . . . always worried about everyone else. When she still had the daycare--two years ago now--when she was recovering from radiation and a member of the tribe was pregnant (and another was on a conference call in the back room), she asked me to run after the toddler she was watching and the babies of those tribe members. She kept apologizing, as three of us made jokes about the single, childless chick earning her kept with the babies all day. She couldn't understand why I kept saying it was no bother and she needed to pull out the radiation card again. That, among other things, will be how I will always remember her.
I felt uncomfortable about her paying so much attention to me, even as we knew her time was getting borrowed. A month or two ago we talked about my coming up late this spring. I don't think either of us really thought her final hour would chime before I rolled my little red wagon into her driveway again. These past two months I couldn't bring myself to tell her what was going on . . . I knew she would be so concerned, perhaps displacing and ignoring her own pain for mine, and in the end . . . those of us left behind know that Barb would stop the world for a friend if she could. She's been on my mind near daily, and I can only hope that she didn't think I abandoned her. Instead, the horror of life and the choas of the day to day created rivers and ravines . . .
Two years ago I took her three not-so-babies out for Christmas. We saw lights, ate dinner, and amused ourselves. They will forever by "the little stollies" as they have long had a propensity to knock over signs and blame me. Typically in good fun. I did get them, looking angelic, that night. Between that and getting to have dinner with her husband sans kids Barb said that was the best gift of the year. Her mother--on the other hand--said the best gift was my convincing Barb to buy a winter coat (as she would never buy herself one). It was black, a puffer, and came with a storage bag . . . that was the selling point for Barb. I giggled, as I spun around in a puffer with a faux fur trimmed hood. Something as benign as a winter coat holds so much more meaning now.
My puffer is packed in the back of the closet now, and I think I'll let it linger there until the next winter. I don't have it in me today to hear Barb's laughter as I spun around that suburban, CT TJ Maxx. Instead . . . I can't pack away the memory of those pink sneakers. As I sit here typing, wearing my scarf of the tribe, a well worn Stony Brook hoodie she used to tell me to replace with a "pretty one" I made, and a pair of sweats that Barb would respond to like my mother (ahem, the are well worn and may or may not have a hole in them) I know that tomorrow is another day that she didn't get. A month past forty, with three spirited kids . . .
She had told me that she intended to live her final days, hours, and years taking care of others, doing what she could, making the world a little better for someone else. That . . .that she did.
Tomorrow I'm off to find a pair of hot pink heels. If nothing else, I'll wear them while I finish the latest article and short story. Maybe I'll wear them while I write one based on her.
In 2013 I met a woman named Barb, and when I met her she was recovering from just having discovered a cancer the size of a football in her leg. A football. A fucking football. Barb with her three kids, a widower herself, a new husband with two nearly grown teenagers, and a suburban house. When we met, she was just starting her home daycare up again . . . her Dad got certified so he could help her, and her family moved the daycare chaos up to the main floor since the surgery and cancer made walking up and down the stairs to the basement difficult on a good day and near impossible on most.
I hadn't been married a year, when Barb and I met. After that January meeting we saw each other again in the spring, after I helped moved a friend up there. There was a party and she remembered my red pepper allergy, went through great pains to make a dip tray (riddled with veggies) I could eat. We doubled over laughing when she realized the taco flavoring mix would bust a move on my allergies . . . I told her--like I did many times--to not beat herself up. She had radiation brain, which she should milk more. Forget to pick a kid up? Radiation brain. Forget to turn the oven on before you pop the chicken in? Radiation brain. Forget to wear a bra? Radiation brain.
She would cringe at my alluding she forgot to wear a bra . . . she didn't, at least not in those "early" days.
As the days turned to years, Barb hunted me down on Facebook--as mutual friends said "B, you sure you wanna do that? Nessa's political crazy." Well, she never unfriended me over my militant politics (a word others have dubbed me, not I-I say). Though, during election season I hear that she avoided Facebook knowing I would be blowing up like a '72 Ford Pinto.
Then one weekend we schlepped up to her husband's cabin in New Hampshire. It was the beginning of fall, the leaves were on fire, my marriage was already rocky, and the retreat was everything we needed and didn't need all at once. There was a girls tradition at the cabin to subsist on gummy bears and mac n cheese for days on end. I high jacked that with acorn squash baked with butter and raw sugar. Since it tasted like candy--granted a moderately healthier version than the bags of Twizzlers and gummy bears scattered accross the cabin floor--it was dubbed an acceptable substance for cabin weekend. During that weekend Barb and I went on a long, meandering walk on the road around the lake. As ducks clucked for us, and the sky began to drizzle, as we shared secrets of life, our own misgivings, and the stains of our pasts. As we climbed those steep and not-so-rolling hills, her pinky toes were a little numb from her shoes. I side-eyed her and said "you need some better shoes . . ." Her response, and I kid you not, "But, I like my neon pink sneakers Nessa. I'm not working out without neon pink sneakers." Laughing, we barely made it back from that walk before the skies really did open up. I snapped a pic of us that day, and she'd come back to haunt me if I blasted it here . . .
When I finally left my husband, she didn't know it all (no one really did as I kept more than I should have to myself), all she said was "I know you don't believe in divorce. Something was bad. Bad . . ." and then she diatribed about how sad it was that I lost Ripple in the split. She made mention of this pic, taken a day before I headed up to her cabin in the woods, as it was a fan favorite. Right now, I'd give a few things short of everything to have ma petite chien noir on my bed with me.
Like I said, the days became years and leg cancer turned into "angry kidney" that really wasn't a kidney infection but rather an aggressive cancer growth crawling up her spine. And kidneys. And the lungs. The lungs are what finally called the uncle flag. Years later, miles into the fight, and endless hours of struggle along the way.
Another friend made comment today that it feels like yesterday that I posted headscarves I had made for Barb's tribe. She was about to endure chemo, and since we were scattered throughout New England and me in New York I thought it was the most amusing thing I could do. I used some hunks of Parisian map fabric, some turquoise and yellow print I had leftover from a quilt, and scores of black and teal ribbon I had picked up in Turkey the summer before. That November I was off to Antalya, and I posted my pic from the plane (as she started chemo that Friday). Somewhere in there I sent her a dress too, one from bamboo knit in a charcoal grey . . . I sent a note that when one endures chemo one should not have to feel like crap on a cracker while wearing sludge. She was tickled. I never saw her in that dress, but I hear she loved it and wore it often. I hear that her and her kids fought over a hat I knitted her and the scarf, for which she often said (after loosing her hair) "Isn't this hat/scarf meant for me . . . the sick one?" Apparently, puppy-dog eyes followed . . .All along she had been so worried about me. My being alone, my prolonged Lupus flare from hell, and when her and her Dad came to the city last October she said "Nessa, you have a huff and puff when you walk and breathe. What's going on?" That six month battle to finally get diagnosed is a story for another day . . . but, as with everything else Barb was always worried about everyone but her. I ended up at the hospital for a day, not long after that, with a kidney blaring the entire library of Guns N Roses and chest pains causing my stare in the face of insanity resolve to fade. She started blowing up my phone, very upset, because I didn't call or notify anyone . . . she was so concerned I was alone. I told her I had been through worse alone, and then I said I doubted this was that detrimental. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't . . . maybe if someone had been physically with me, like she kept yelling via text, that I would have gotten answers when the leaves were alive with fire and not long and distant memories leaving grey trees in their wake.
Barb kept those messages alive, always worried about her single friend living alone in the city. I don't think that part scared her. I think the part about me having the Lupus hell worried her the most. She was like that . . . always worried about everyone else. When she still had the daycare--two years ago now--when she was recovering from radiation and a member of the tribe was pregnant (and another was on a conference call in the back room), she asked me to run after the toddler she was watching and the babies of those tribe members. She kept apologizing, as three of us made jokes about the single, childless chick earning her kept with the babies all day. She couldn't understand why I kept saying it was no bother and she needed to pull out the radiation card again. That, among other things, will be how I will always remember her.
I felt uncomfortable about her paying so much attention to me, even as we knew her time was getting borrowed. A month or two ago we talked about my coming up late this spring. I don't think either of us really thought her final hour would chime before I rolled my little red wagon into her driveway again. These past two months I couldn't bring myself to tell her what was going on . . . I knew she would be so concerned, perhaps displacing and ignoring her own pain for mine, and in the end . . . those of us left behind know that Barb would stop the world for a friend if she could. She's been on my mind near daily, and I can only hope that she didn't think I abandoned her. Instead, the horror of life and the choas of the day to day created rivers and ravines . . .
Two years ago I took her three not-so-babies out for Christmas. We saw lights, ate dinner, and amused ourselves. They will forever by "the little stollies" as they have long had a propensity to knock over signs and blame me. Typically in good fun. I did get them, looking angelic, that night. Between that and getting to have dinner with her husband sans kids Barb said that was the best gift of the year. Her mother--on the other hand--said the best gift was my convincing Barb to buy a winter coat (as she would never buy herself one). It was black, a puffer, and came with a storage bag . . . that was the selling point for Barb. I giggled, as I spun around in a puffer with a faux fur trimmed hood. Something as benign as a winter coat holds so much more meaning now. 
A near year to the day, these pics were . . . both in midtown.
She had told me that she intended to live her final days, hours, and years taking care of others, doing what she could, making the world a little better for someone else. That . . .that she did.
Four women and paint. And alchohol. And one on pain meds. What a night.
Tomorrow I'm off to find a pair of hot pink heels. If nothing else, I'll wear them while I finish the latest article and short story. Maybe I'll wear them while I write one based on her.
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