Witnessing Death
“The two hardest things to say in life are HELLO for the first time and GOODBYE for the last time. (Moira Rogers)
Yesterday I stood with the two daughters of a long-time friend. I stood with two other friends from life events, and my husband, who had been her friend since he was eight years old. One of the daughter’s husbands was there. Our friend Linda was dying. She was five years older than my husband, but in childhood, he had become best friends with her brother and thus was in her household as much or more than he was in his own home just down the street. We were a circular group of seven around her bed in the Intensive Care unit of the local hospital.
Our friend Linda was a force to be reckoned with. I don’t think she topped much more than 4 feet, 11 inches. Her hair has been white since her thirties. She was a “girl on the go” and she had her opinions and her way of doing things. Other opinions were not of much consequence to her, and she was always confident in her ways of navigating life.
Her parents were older when she and her brother were born, and because my husband spent so much time with their family, he was an endless source of “Linda stories”, as well as the quirks and sayings of her household. Thus, Linda has been in my life prominently since the day my husband and I met. Much of our daily conversation is peppered with sayings picked up from his…
