1991 2014
She's been like a sister to me, to so many of us, for years. Since before I was old enough to drive, I adored my friend. She was one where you can drift around in your life and come back a decade later and pick up right where you left off. It'd been a decade and change since I'd last talked to her, after saying goodbye to social media.
Yet she and I, we mirrored our lives in some interesting ways without knowing. Both of us got married, got divorced, then found our true love in unpredictable ways. We both lost our babies, moved to the Skagit Valley, learned to find our hearts in new ways.
After feeling myself about to emerge from a three year battle with intense depression following my losses, she and I had reconnected, only to discover we had just missed each other living in the same town by a year. And when I arrived up here late last summer to start unpacking our new life in the Valley, the first neighbors who came to introduce themselves were a woman and a ginger-haired young man...the latter who turned out to be my friend's beloved stepson. Yes, just two houses down lived her wife's ex-husband and his wife…with this young man still at home for the time being.
Yet our time was limited. Just over a year, it'd turn out. Gliomatosis Cerebri, one of the rarest forms of brain cancer that is inoperable and fatal, was her diagnosis at the start of the year, and so I was driving down to see her even before our bags were fully unpacked. Each time we spent together I did not know if it would be our last. The first time was summer, where I took her over to an esthetician friend near my old house, who gave her the pampering she needed. The second time was autumn, where my husband came along to meet her and we had a simple double date at the local park near her house. He immediately was drawn to her as they both shared the dry wit and understanding of how brain damage changes your abilities and others' perceptions of you. And he loved how she and I were so at ease. The third time was spring, where I swooped her up from her home and we drove out to the coast, stopping at a cafe where I'd prearranged a special brunch and they'd gone the extra mile to decorate her table and put her name up on the monitors with WE LOVE YOU! on them and lots of rainbows and spoiling her. She loved it. But the biggest part of the trip for me was just the extended time just to talk, just us girls. Not about the cancer, just about our lives, just to be...us. Just to enjoy our friendship.
I thought there'd be more time as Summer arrived. She asked me to come see her, and I wasn't able to logistically due to selling our car (in hindsight though of course I now hate myself for what now feels like a flimsy excuse I could have found SOME way to overcome to get down there), but she then said she was coming up to the Valley so she could see me and other friends, and I was so excited to have her sit out on our back deck and give her some quiet time to be in my garden away from all the fray, where no one could tell her how to be, where she didn't feel 'babysat'....if just for a moment in time. But just days before their arrival she was in temporary hospice. We texted back and forth through the end of the month as she arrived back home from hospice, and she said she was getting all my messages and that she loved me and would catch me soon on everything. They got fewer and further between and these last couple weeks the silence was deafening. I have seen death first hand and I know what it means. But I kept hoping, as I had for so long, that there'd be another text and another glimmer of hope that maybe I was wrong and she was fine and just resting more but still there. I shared a photo of the birthday cake I made for my husband and that we just bought a car so I'd be available to come down at any time...but it was still quiet. This week I noticed that the finally-budding red cockscomb (celosia) that she said was her favorite flower ("it looks kind of like a brain"), the one I'd planted by seed at the start of the year to honor her), seemed to be frozen in time.
As I could not find her wife's phone number that I swore were on my phone, I asked my husband to walk over to our neighbors and see if he could get it from them. I was too scared to go over there and keep myself together. When he walked back into the garden where I was sitting desperately trying to work on a crossword puzzle, I looked at him and he couldn't get the words out. I knew.
Shannon was gone, slipping away quickly the morning prior after returning to hospice. My friend, my sister, and the beloved of so many, was onto her next adventure. Her pain was gone
I saw a hummingbird flying above the garden and knew she was free.
Suppose I say summer, write the word “hummingbird,” put it in an envelope, take it down the hill to the box. When you open my letter you will recall those days and how much, just how much, I love you. ~ Raymond Carver
Dear Sis, I love you, I am grateful for your presence in my life, and I will miss you forever. Thank you for inspiring me to love more every day.
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