A year ago last Thursday, my best friend H entered a hospice to die. Every day for the next three weeks, until she died on January 5th, I travelled up the QEW Highway to spend at least part of every day with her. I had promised her, when she became sick six months before, that I would be with her to the end, and except for two/three days when she had a full roster of visitors or relatives coming in, I made that trip.
Her husband, D, spent every night at the hospice, sleeping on a lounger by her bed. She told me how much she enjoyed those quiet evenings together, as they lay side by side, holding hands, just talking quietly about “stuff.” I usually relieved him in the mornings, when he would go home to grab a shower, a nap, and do some laundry or shopping. I would sit there, sometimes reading to her, other times just yakking about more “stuff.” It became my mission in life to make her laugh at least five times every day, and I generally succeeded. We also wept some bitter tears. Laughing and crying together — what else are friends for?
I had met H a month after I came to Canada. In fact, she interviewed me and gave me my first job here. Although I only stayed with the company for six months, we became and remained friends, bonding over a shared cultural identity. Although she had been born in England and spent her childhood in West Africa, where her father worked for a huge multinational, as a teenager she had acquired an Anglo-Irish step-family that she adored, and one of them was also called Tessa. She used to spend part of the summer holidays from her boarding school with them in Ireland, sailing, swimming, and generally mucking about. This was something quite new to her, as an only child, with a cold and unloving mother, who had taken her back to England and dropped her off with a total stranger, when H was only 6 years old. This was a woman who would be paid to look after H on breaks from boarding school, and with whom she spent every holiday for the next ten years, except for the few weeks that she got to spend with her step-family.
H preferred not to talk about that time, but I don’t think she ever got over her sense of abandonment. She only saw her parents together once during those ten years, when they made a trip from West Africa and took her to Germany for a holiday, where they told her they were divorcing. To pour salt in the wound, H’s father informed her he had only stayed with her mother because of her — which was a bit much, since she hadn’t lived with them for seven years at that point.
H dropped out of school when she was 16 and moved about from job to dead-end job for a year or two, before deciding she wanted to travel around the world. As it turned out, she never went beyond Canada, after stepping off the ship in Montreal and falling in love with the country. At the time I met her, she had been here for twenty years, and was in the process of divorcing her first husband, a jolly wee man from Northern Ireland. He was also called D, and she cared deeply for him, but she had fallen in love with the second D, with whom we both worked. Like everybody else in the office, I did not know about H & D at the time. I found out when, some months after I had left the company, I called H and he answered the phone at her apartment, while she was out.
D was married to someone else, although separated, but was dragging his heels about getting divorced and making a commitment to H, so she eventually threw him out. She and I spent many late nights, crying on each other’s shoulder over the two bastards we were later to marry, while making huge inroads on bottles of Irish whiskey. Fortunately for both our livers, D came to his senses after a month or two, got his divorce, and they bought a house and moved in together. They should have lived happily ever after, but then lung cancer reared its ugly head, which is why D and I were spelling each other at the hospice last year.
To be continued
What a terribly sad story Tessa. But what an amazing friend she had in you.
Makes you wonder though whether her sad early life continued eating away at her psychologically until it manifested into something eating her up physically.
Thank goodness the man she loved stayed at her side when she needed him most though.
Thank you, Laura. She was a pretty amazing friend herself. I think about her every day.
Interesting that you should make that comment about abandonment eating away at H. Her Anglo-Irish stepmother, whom she adored, made the same comment in a letter, which was waylaid by H’s husband, because he felt it would upset her too much.
As to D staying by her side to the end, thereby hangs a tale, which shall be taken up in the continued saga. Hence the “bitter” memories, because I have only wonderful memories of H.
By the by, thank you so much for your online friendship to me lately. In answer to your question I am working out my 11 weeks notice on the basis that it is slightly easier to get a job whilst still in a job. In addition as a manager friend once told me ‘always work out your notice – a lot can happen in 11 x weeks!’
No thanks necessary, Laura. I got so much pleasure from reading your blog, and when the redundancy thing hit you, I had a fair idea of how badly you must feel. I think you’re right to work out your notice, in terms of it being easier to apply for jobs from a job, but it will be quite hard on you. Don’t be surprised to find yourself shunted to the sidelines, as time moves along.
OH dear, you’ve stirred up a bunch of memories of my own time taking care of my best friend while she died of ovarian cancer. As you already know, that’s a time you thought you couldn’t get through and now you’d never trade that time for anything in the world (except to have her back). We laughed and cried and talked really deep during those late nights and early mornings while I laid in my little cot beside her bed. I apologized for crying once and she told me not to do that because it warmed her heart to know I cared enough to cry over her so much.
Now if you’ll excuse me…..I’ve got to go cry again.
Oh great, MLS! Now you’ve started me off again … But you’re right, I would not trade one minute of those last weeks. But what I wouldn’t give to have H back.
I already know the headlines of this story, but your narration of the back story and of your friendship prior to H’s fatal illness are wonderful to read…It would make a substantial “novel” about friendship at its finest moments…I look forward to the next installment…I love the phrase “to be continued”… a guarantee of hope, friendship and love…
Unfortunately, the bitter memories of the title lie in the next instalment …
well…i’m on the edge of my seat for the next installment. So sorry you had to go thru this, but what a wonderful friend you had for so many years.
Nice to see you back, Thistle. And you’re right, H was a wonderful friend.
Oh Tessa:
Thanks for sharing this, for all the friends we loved and lost, which leaves us with the treasure of glistening memories.
XO
WWW
I’ve been more fortunate than most, I think, because H is the first of my close friends to be lost in this way. Not that I really expect it to get any easier, but could the first be the hardest? Please say yes ….