I think she’s insulating me from too much pain. While she lived, she was such a comfort through my grief after my mom died in January, 2020 – a month or so before the world was thrown into the Covid-19 pandemic.

My friend sent me a video of the Pretender’s I’ll Stand By You, and Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors, when the fall-out from my mom’s death was happening with my sisters, while my younger brother was spiraling from schizophrenia, in and out of hospitals. I was trying so hard to help keep him alive, and I soon realized that I couldn’t (and cannot) save him. I can only love him and hope that he is getting what he needs.

Just three years after my mother died, she died. And now another friend from my youth is slipping away from cancer too. I have had three friends, and likely soon, a fourth, die from cancer in three years. Is cancer more prevalent now? It seems so.

We could and did talk about everything, and she accepted me as I was, and I, her. I feel sad for people who don’t have that person in their life. That person who knows all about you and likes you anyway. That person who answers the phone at 3 a.m., and stays on the line for as long as you need.

We could be who we were, wheat and chaff, and we had so much laughter and fun too.

She was one of the smartest people I knew. She had such a depth of understanding and a thirst to know. about. e v e r y t h i n g.

I have many people in my life who are dear to me. I met them at high points and at low points, and I am grateful for their presence in my life – even if I couldn’t fulfill what they thought I could do if only I’d try more.

I wanted to, is all I can say. I don’t understand why my brain works the way it does, but my therapist tells me all the time that deep trauma and depression is the hardest condition to treat. It just is. It’s like a virus that morphs when you treat one aspect, only to present itself another way.

Having had so many wonderful healers in my life has been a greater bounty than I could ever repay, and I hope each and every one of them know that I love them, and how important they were. I hope I gave them a sense of love and gratitude that they felt.

I hope my friend is singing among the stars now, or I hope that she is doing whatever it is that matters to her. She’s probably just energy now, but there was an essence that was her spirit or soul, or whatever, while on earth, and I think that is what defines us here, and is what we leave with.

I sense her smiling, and waiting for me. She told me she’d be there to meet me when it’s my time to go. It’s not mine to know when this life will be done, but I still have things that are important to me to do.

Don’t wait to do them, she whispers. Don’t wait.

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© seekingsearchingmeaning (aka Hermionejh), Making A Way Blog, 2010 – current