B.F.F., page 20
* * *
Dear Meredith,
I’m so sorry I pushed the treatment I wanted you to have on you. It’s just that those places might have exactly the treatment that you need, and I really want you to have what you need. I want that more than anything. Please know that I’m not trying to control you.
Dear Meredith,
I respect your choices and support whatever you decide. I did a little research on the program at Vanderbilt, and thought it might be useful to check out. Would you be interested if I set up a call?
Dear Meredith,
I’m sorry for putting pressure on you. I really want to do this right. It feels like the right thing to tell you that I’m willing to fly anywhere on Earth to find you a doctor who understands what’s happening to you and has a solution. You tell me all the time to pray to accept abundance and to trust the universe and my Higher Power. Is it possible that your Higher Power put me in your life to help you find treatment?
I tore up every handwritten apology letter I started as soon as I reread it. I couldn’t stop myself from imposing my vision of her treatment. It was time to let go, but somehow, I couldn’t get all the way there.
Two weeks after Meredith crossed the street to get away from me and my bullying, I flew to Austin with my family for Thanksgiving. Meredith was on my mind constantly. Thinking of you! Happy Thanksgiving! I texted Meredith on Thanksgiving Day. The next day I typed: I love and miss you. Meredith “liked” both of them but didn’t type a response. I prayed to let her have all the space she needed. Every time I thought of her, I sent her love and blessings for good health and joy. At least once a day, I imagined her pouring her heart out to Anna or sending long, intimate texts to some other, closer friend—someone who loved her better than I did. I reminded myself that it was none of my business who Meredith turned to and that if I really loved her, which I did, then I had to let her lean on whomever she wanted.
My sole job, I told myself, was to keep my feet planted in the friendship no matter how painful, scared, or jealous I felt. I would not fuck this up further by withdrawing or finding an excuse to back away.
Emily, who always offered sage counsel, reminded me, “Meredith is in a place that none of us can imagine. She might need space from every single person. Her silence may have nothing to do with you at all.”
The day after Thanksgiving, I ran a few miles along Lake Austin and through the hip South Congress area, where bearded men and women in platform shoes lined up for cold brew and breakfast tacos. I stopped to take a picture of a Willie Nelson mural with my phone. When I looked at the image later, I saw that I’d also captured a street sign in the background. The cross street: “Meredith Street.” I sent her the picture with a smiley face emoji.
She wrote back right way. I love and miss you, Sweetie. See you when you get home.
I cried to see a typed message from her—right there on the sidewalk, bawling my eyes out, spinning in a circle as I covered my face with my hands. She still loves me! She’s okay! We’re okay! She misses me!
The next time we went to coffee together, I slid a note across the table.
Dear Meredith,
I have your back. Always.
Love,
Christie
She held my hand across the table, and I did the holiest thing of all: I shut the fuck up.
35.
A few months later, Meredith pulled a small black velvet bag out of her purse after a meeting. She tugged on the yellow cord that cinched the top and pulled something out.
“Here,” she said, offering me a second pink quartz rock shaped like a heart.
“What’s this for?”
“Big scan tomorrow.” So this was now her thing: giving out these rocks on the eve of a scary scan. “I’m worried about my liver.” She pressed on her abdomen with both hands and grimaced. “I can feel it.” She pointed at the rock in my hand. “I’m giving these to all my friends. Carry it tomorrow and think good thoughts for me.”
Hanging from Meredith’s shoulder was her giant tote bag full of textbooks, school papers, notebooks, a daily meditation book. The tote bag of a woman with plans for the future. Graduation was months away, and she planned to be there, even though the trek to school on the train sapped more energy every day. I squeezed the rock.
“You’ll never believe this,” she said as we walked toward her car. “I got a call from Celia Rodin offering me a full-time job when I graduate. She wants me to be the spiritual counselor at the treatment center she runs.”
“What?” I yelped and stopped on the sidewalk to face her. Dr. Rodin and her team specialized in treating eating disorders, addictions, mood disorders, and trauma. This job satisfied Meredith’s deepest professional and spiritual goal—it was the point of all her overnight shifts, all the papers she wrote on addiction and codependence, all the schlepping to Loyola for night classes and group projects with students one-third her age. This was it. A dream realized.
“Your dream job waiting for when you graduate?” I raised my hand for her to high-five me, and she hit the bull’s-eye of my palm pretty hard, considering her scrawny arms and the way the chemo forced her into daily, three-hour naps. She beamed, I beamed. No one deserved a dream job more than Meredith.
“It’s exactly what I always wanted.”
“How many people can say that?” I’d never said that; I couldn’t even visualize a dream job unless it was sitting in a comfy chair reading books all day for six figures and full benefits, including dental. I felt like bursting into happy tears; I couldn’t think of a time when I’d been so happy for a friend. “Goddamn, you did it. I fucking love this news!” I pumped my fist in the air; Meredith stood still.
“It’s like actors who say it’s enough to be nominated for an Oscar. I feel that. It was nice to be asked.”
“You’re not taking it?” A deep sadness clouded my elation.
Meredith shook her head, and I realized my mistake. “No, honey.” She tapped my fist that held the rock she’d just given me.
Could she do it even for a few weeks? Could she work one day a week for as long as she could? What if the scan offered good news—great news, even? What if the liver issue was just indigestion from those Tupperwares of quinoa? What if the job brought her so much joy that it forestalled the cellular process that had gone so wrong in her body? What if she said yes and waited to see what happened?
We stood in silence, both of us watching the tears form in the other’s eyes.
“I so wish you could take that job, Mere.”
“Me, too.”
“Do you hate me for holding on to hope?” I put the rock in my pocket and held up my hands to the sky, painting her my vision. “I can see you, walking in that treatment center touching the lives of those suffering people—the anorexics who are scared to eat, the bingers who can’t stop. They all want to spend time with you—they form lines outside your office for the chance to talk to you—and beg to have your email when they get discharged. They’ll send you Christmas cards for years to come, thanking you for helping them gather the broken pieces of themselves and reassemble them into a useful, sane life. They’ll name their babies Meredith, after the counselor who helped them so much.” I put my hands down. “That’s the vision I had when you told me about the job. I hope it’s not insensitive for me to say all that.”
“I love you for sharing that with me.” She put her arm around me and leaned in close. “Do you hate me for abandoning you?”
“Honestly, a little bit.” She squeezed my shoulder.
“Do you hate me for being honest,” I asked.
“Not one bit.”
That day she gave me the rock wasn’t the same day she slid a box across the table, one filled with a string of pearls. But in my memory she handed me the rock, told me about the job, and then gifted me the jewelry box all at once.
“I didn’t realize it was time for this,” I said, when she handed me the pearls. I let them hang from my fingers. “Thank you.”
“I feel lucky. Most people don’t know how they’re going to die. I do.”
I wrapped the strand around my fingers and my wrist the same way I used to hold my rosary as a little girl. A few months earlier, she’d given me a gold ring studded with pearls, and I’d gasped to see something I was so used to seeing on her slender fingers on mine. I’d worn it once to a coffee date, and she smiled when she noticed it.
“I feel a little nauseated,” I blurted out. The queasy feeling in my stomach came on suddenly, and I hadn’t connected it to the jewelry or the rock or the job.
“That’s sadness, sweetie. You feel sad.”
I nodded and swallowed hard.
“I definitely feel sad.” And afraid. Afraid of what was about to happen to Meredith’s body, and then her mind and her spirit. I was less afraid of how I would do as a friend—I hit my goal of being a good enough friend these days—but I wondered if I could keep it up.
As if reading my mind, she said, “You don’t have to do it perfectly. Just show up.”
* * *
“They’re growing. The tumors,” Meredith told me over the phone when she got her latest scan results.
“Oh, Mere. I wanted you to get better news.”
“Deep down, I knew.”
The last time I’d seen her, she kept laying her hand on her side, saying she was worried about her liver. I saw the terror in her eyes and the wince of pain when she pressed her hand into her flesh. I’d hoped she was wrong. But over the past few months, I’d also begun to hear something different in her voice—a thinning around the edges when she talked about the future.
Now I understood I was hearing her readiness to let go.
“What comes next?” I asked.
“Hospice.”
The word made me grind my teeth. It seemed premature and caught me by surprise. I thought hospice meant you could no longer walk, make dinner, hold a conversation. Meredith could still do all of those most days. But she was done submitting her body to the dwindling hope offered by one more round of treatment. No more maybe or slim chance or possibility. Going forward, she’d get medical care only to ease her pain, not to prolong her life.
Neither of us cried, though we sat in the vast silence of this new stage. One last time, I offered to bring over a meal.
“No, honey. I can’t—”
“I know.”
“One good thing is that I never have to step foot in another hospital ever again. You have no idea how happy that makes me. I want to snuggle with the cats and the dog, and look at Lake Michigan and the blue sky from my window. I want to be home. I belong at home.”
I hated that we’d arrived at the hospice stage, but I heard acceptance in her voice and couldn’t help but celebrate her liberation from having to work so tirelessly to save her own life.
* * *
On Mother’s Day, my kids woke me up with snuggles and homemade cards. Zara handed me a water bottle, and then she and Elias shooed me to the gym for my favorite class. Afterward, full of endorphins and still humming the Lady Gaga tune that played during cooldown, I drove home with the windows open. Chicago turns slowly to spring, but on this May morning the sun sat high and proud, saluting the city from a sea-blue sky. John sent a text saying that the kids were preparing something, so take your time.
I passed our street and did a loop around the block. I would have done a second loop in the other direction, but I had to pee.
“Surprise,” the kids yelled when I walked in the door. They handed me a piece of cream-colored cardstock with the word Menu emblazoned across it. Their handmade menu consisted not simply of food but also activities. I could pair a fruit smoothie with a bike ride or pick grilled cheese and a movie. Elias hopped from one foot to the other, excited to watch my reaction.
“A movie would be so fun,” I said. The year before we’d seen the RBG documentary on Mother’s Day, and this year I wanted to see Amazing Grace, the film about Aretha Franklin. “But I do love a bike ride.”
I peeled off my coat and sat down at the living room table with the kids to map out the day. My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I silenced it without looking at it. It rang again right away. I slipped it out of my pocket and saw it was Meredith. I held the phone up so John could see it.
“Answer,” he said with a serious face. “The kids and I will look up movie times.”
“Hey, Mere,” I said, ducking up the stairs. “What’s up?”
I heard sobbing. Deep wracking sobs.
“I’m here,” I said. “Breathe and cry. Talk when you can.”
“I’m sorry,” she got the words out, but then her crying smothered what came next.
“I’m—
“ruining—”
“your—”
“Mother’s Day.”
“Don’t worry about that. What do you need?”
“I’m at Northwestern Hospital. I fell and shattered my elbow last night. I had to revoke hospice to get the ambulance to pick me up and bring me to the hospital.”
“You fell?”
“It was the middle of the night. I thought I could still walk from the bedroom to the bathroom.” She broke down and sobbed. “But I didn’t make it.”
“Meredith!”
“Can you come?”
“Yes.”
John had joined me on the edge of our bed. He nodded. Of course I would go to her. When I got off the phone, I worried about the kids. We were supposed to spend the whole day together. I didn’t want to let them down. But Meredith’s voice. It sounded like an emergency. I’d told her I would come.
“Tell the kids the truth,” John said. “That Meredith is very sick, and she asked you to come. It’s an emergency. It’s also a privilege. We can redo Mother’s Day next weekend.”
* * *
When I found Meredith’s room down a bright white but eerily quiet hallway, there was a huge poster board hung on the door with thick white masking tape. The message scrawled on it looked like a child’s handwriting. DO NOT ENTER without first checking into the nurse’s station. NO EXCEPTIONS. The language sounded ominous, but the fourth-grade level handwriting made it seem like a joke. I walked around the corner to the nurse’s station.
“I’m here to see Meredith in room 3510,” I said to the kind woman in blue scrubs, her blond hair piled on her head.
“Are you Christie?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. How did she know?
“You’re the only one we’re allowed to let in. She doesn’t want to see anyone else.”
“Glad I made the cut.”
I returned to Meredith’s room and swung the door open. Meredith sat in her bed, a white plaster cast encasing her elbow and a dazed look clouding her features.
“Come in,” she said.
I gestured at the door. “Friendly sign.”
“I’m sick of people. I only want to see you and Gage.”
I smiled, happy for her orneriness, the pulse of her life. Also flattered as hell to be one of the people on her two-person list. She patted the side of the bed. I walked over and sat next to her. She looked exactly as frail and hollowed out as someone who would be gone in ten weeks, though we didn’t know that then. Her body swam in her hospital gown, and the patches of hair on her head were sparse. She asked me about my kids and how I was spending my Mother’s Day.
“We’re going to the movies later.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted—”
“Nope. Don’t do that.” I looked at the machine she was hooked up to. “Are you in pain?”
“I’m okay.”
“I’ll get you more morphine if you want it.” I had no idea how to do that, but it seemed like the right offer to make.
She shook her head. “I’m comfortable enough.”
I wanted to ask her, Why me? Of all her friends, the dozens of women who sat next to her during thousands of twelve-step meetings, why did she save me this seat, the one by her bed? I had that feeling I had when she handed me the scarves, the feeling that one of us—me—had misjudged the intimacy level between us. Either I was mistaken to be surprised by my front-row seat, or she’d mistakenly offered it to me. Meredith had friends she’d known for decades, and of course Anna and Emily wore those blue bridesmaid’s dresses at her wedding. But how was it me sitting here now?
“Last night after I got settled here, I had a long hard cry. I let myself really understand what’s happening, like way down all the way through me. I’m really leaving this world. So much of this whole experience of sickness has seemed like a movie, like a terrible thing happening to someone else. But now I know it’s me. It’s happening to me. I felt so scared and so sad. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“I wish you would have called when you were crying,” I whispered.
“There are some parts of dying that no one can do with me or for me. I had to do it alone. This deep knowing that I’m going away is something I had to arrive at on my own. I called when I needed you.”
“Thank you for calling.”
She talked some more about the long dark night—how she fell, how the hospital didn’t want to send an ambulance because she was a hospice patient, how the doctors ultimately decided against surgery for her arm, how she fully faced her death—I thought she would tell me she was “totally at peace” and “ready to go,” like they do in the movies, but she didn’t. She was done fighting, but she didn’t want to go.
At one point, she ran her hand through the imaginary hair on her head, just like she used to do. She paused, hand on her naked scalp. “Did you see that?” she asked. “I forgot I have no hair!”
“I was mesmerized by the gesture—”
“Isn’t it amazing? All of this? It’s amazing. Me and you, sitting here, on Mother’s Day. You have two kids, and you’re sitting here with me? We’re what we told ourselves we could never be: friends. Even though it’s hard, even through an unwelcome transition.”
