Today was a day of loss. Google reminded me that my cousin Mary Pat''s birthday is in two days, but she died in November, from a less than one year battle with brain cancer.
And today, Pete, the husband of a life-long friend, Jane, died after a brave 10 year battle with stomach cancer.
I've been friends with Jane since First Grade . We met in Sister Mary Ralph's class. It was in that same class that I met my husband-to-be. It was the year we learned how to tie our shoes. It was a beginning.
Eight years of Grade School - First Confession, First Communion, Confirmation and I recently ran across a black and white photo my father took of Jane in Eighth grade when she was May Queen. dressed in a white wedding dress, honoring the Blessed Virgin. On the secular side, we spent hours listening to the Beatles - Rubber Soul in her frilly, pink and white bedroom. It was a time of blossoming in so many ways.
Four years of Catholic Private Girls School - dressed in matching green uniforms Freshman and Sophomore year, navy blue Junior and Senior year. CYO dances, first kisses, a taste of cigarettes, alcohol and weed. Pulling away from our parents. Daring to be individuals except we all wore our hair in the same way - long, straight and parted in the middle. Different - but not really.
We parted, off to different Universities, but reunited, as true friends do, once we had settled into our married, child-filled days. Some friendship last forever.
We had many sets of twins in our Grade School class - some identical, some fraternal. One set of the fraternal twins had an older brother. Way older. Like five, six years older. In-college-before-we -had-even-left-Grade-School older. But Jane was fixated. He was the one. Time passed - grade school, high school, college, but finally, as my father would say about my mother: "I chased her until she caught me."
Both my mother and Jane knew their soulmates before their soulmates figured it out for themselves.
And now its over. How can it be over? It's not over. Like the cruel child's game, the music stopped and Jane's chair has been removed. The one that brought her to the table, the one that caught her spilled wine, the one that cradled her as she cradled her first child and every child after.
Jane, your chair is gone; you stand there alone.
But you are not alone. We circle around you, holding hands and dance to the unheard music and then, exhausted, carry you back to our chairs which we have pushed together to form into a bench to sleep in each others' arms.
Sleep well, Pete.
