The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.
19 February 2025
cancer took her past
she knows me not grasping why
sun melting snow quick
Today marks 11 years since one of my favorite people, a good friend, died from cancer. She had beaten cancer once before when it first appeared on her tongue. Then, it returned several years later in her lungs and then, finally, spread to her brain.
She called me about three weeks before she died. We had a great conversation. She told me she was in hospice and asked me to come visit. I said, “Soon,” unsure when that would be. A few days later, her wife called and said, “Come now.”
BJ was fading fast, and I got the first plane I could from Louisville to Seattle. By the time I arrived, she could speak words, not sentences, not full thoughts. I sat with her, sometimes quietly, sometimes telling her stories, sometimes massaging her back.
Someone came to visit and asked BJ how she and I knew each other. She tried to answer and then looked to me to reply. I told the woman we met years ago, when we both worked for a peace organization. I might have been 16, and she, 10 years my senior. She befriended me as she did many people, never judging but acknowledging my age when everyone else wanted to go out to a bar after a meeting. She took care of her young friend.
After the visitor left, BJ looked at me with sorrowful eyes. I took her hand and asked, “You know who I am?” She nodded. I said, “Yes, we know who we are to each other. We are great friends, and that’s all that matters.”
I’ve been thinking a great deal about BJ this month, missing what conversations we might be having today about our country. Yesterday, a flyer arrived in the mail about a new Broadway show about Betty Boop. Frankly, I could care less about such a musical. But BJ LOVED Betty Boop. LOVED LOVED LOVED her. I figured that flyer was her laughing and nudging me, perhaps reminding me to be less serious.
featured photo: cover of flyer about Betty Boop the musical coming to Broadway in 2025