50 Years, Almost

 

I have a mug that has the following inscription: “Friends. Our lives were brought together for a reason and I will always be grateful. Thank you for your love, your wisdom and your understanding. Thank you for you being a part of my life.”

This was Amy’s mug. I gave it to her one Christmas as a gift. Now it is mine.

Amy and I met when we were ten years old. Her sister and my brother met and became friends in Junior High School. They discovered they had sisters in the fifth grade who liked to write letters. So we became pen pals. And then one day we met in person. We sat on a bench at a softball game, awkwardly looked at each other, thinking “Who is this person? Will she like me?”

When we reached Junior High School we were already friends, so it was natural that we hung out with each other. The school was bigger. It had more students. There were strangers. And we had several classes together.

At the beginning of eighth grade, tragedy struck when her sister and father were killed in a car accident. We bore the grief and trauma of that incident. My brother had lost his friend. Amy had lost her sister. We became like sisters, sharing our lives through high school graduation.

After high school Amy went to Bible School. I went to a Christian Liberal Arts college. We stayed in touch. We married. We moved away from our home towns. At one point we lost touch with each other, but miraculously a letter she wrote and sent to a very old address made its way into my hands because the postal employee knew my husband and hand delivered it to him at his office.

When Amy’s children were still little, she moved back to Connecticut. Our home state. We would get together for tea and long talks when I was home visiting my mother. She and the kids even came to visit us in Massachusetts.

She stayed in the area while her kids were in school. She sang at my father’s funeral. And she took care of my mother by cleaning her house when my mother got too old to take care of such things.

At some point, Amy moved south. And while we did not have as much correspondence, we never lost touch again.

Amy eventually settled in Pennsylvania. Through email and eventually text messaging we stayed in contact. We spent hours talking on the phone. I would go to Connecticut to see her when she was visiting the area. Social media added a layer of fun; sharing pictures and funny jokes.

In 2020, Amy shared the news that she had been diagnosed with cancer. She had a treatment plan. I made arrangements to care for her during her last two weeks of treatment, knowing that she would need the most care at that time. Due to changes in her treatment plan, and a change the airline made to my plane ticket, I ended up spending a long weekend with her in November. It was a weekend filled with peace and grace. We developed a gentle routine that needed no words. It just worked. We stayed up late. We ate when we were hungry. We did some sightseeing. We shared our faith.

Over the next two years there were more texts, more phone calls. Knowing how cancer progresses, I knew her health was declining. Eventually, my husband said, “You need to go see her.” My supervisor told me to “go” even though it was a busy time of year. And I went. I spent three peaceful days with my friend again. We shared memories and music. We talked about our faith. We prayed.

Amy passed away three weeks later. I cried. She is my friend. I picked up my phone the next day to send her my daily text. I remembered she would not see it. I wanted to call her over the weekend to see how she was doing. There will no longer be those marathon talks. There is more than the emptiness of loss, there is a hole.
She is no longer here. 

The inside rim of the mug has this: “The bonds we have are everlasting.”

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