It is a dreary, gray, rainy morning here in NYC and it is a morning unlike most others in that I have to attend a funeral later. The funeral is for the mom of my childhood friend who I’ve known for 25 years. Her mom died unexpectedly and suddenly last Wednesday. She was young, beautiful, and full of life. She was recently remarried and someone who knew how to make the most of her days. She was a master at appreciating the small things and simply being content. A teacher, a singer, a lover of art. She had plenty of hobbies like running and gardening, and she was always seeing the bright side. A very true cliché is that her smile lit up any room. She made the best cheese pie, and she never let us have sleepovers when we were little. A fun little fact that made no sense in 2nd grade but makes perfect sense to me now that I have my own children.
She was always so supportive of Sofya, her daughter, and even of me or other friends who entered her orbit. She gave you her full attention and excitement when you spoke to her, and she rarely made people doubt themselves. In today’s day and age, this is a gift that few people know how to master. It is more important for them to indicate intelligence and existence of opinion than to simply be, and to listen to another.
This is the second time I am witnessing the passing of a young friend’s mother, and the suddenness in this case only makes it harder. Although can anyone ever be ready to say goodbye to the person who brought them into this world? Is any amount of advance notice enough? It is a strange realization, but it feels to me like the more life you are blessed with and the older you are allowed to grow in good health, the more you are forced to accept what a gift life (in and of itself) without any embellishments is. What a fickle thing it is, to be alive, and how at any given moment, everything can change, for better and for worse. But the tricky thing is, if you spend too much time mulling on said capriciousness, you will live in fear, losing sight of the beauty in the changing autumn leaves or in a soapy sink full of dishes getting clean. You cannot prepare.
When my friend called me the night her mom was admitted to the hospital, she was in London, packing to come home. She actually texted Brandon first to make sure she wouldn’t alarm me, which was probably more considerate than I would have been in similar shoes. She sounded like a person who was frantic but trying to stay calm, answering all of my questions and recounting the story to me, which only consisted of a few details: headache, fainting, ER, somewhere upstate. I got déjà vu, remembering the day that my brother was admitted to the ER after a doctor told him that his month-long cough was either pneumonia or leukemia and that he needed to be checked out immediately. His voice shook as he shared this news over bad wifi.
I recall being absolutely, positively certain that that it was all going to be fine, that of course it was just pneumonia, and that it would be lovely to enjoy a bit of Los Angeles sunshine after a few months of northeast winter weather. What would be our first meal when he waltzed out of the hospital? Would we opt for giant glasses of Mexican style coctel de camarones or bigger-than-our-head burritos with plenty of sour cream and homemade hot sauce on the side? I assumed that we would only have a day or two in the city of angels, so time for cravings would have to be condensed.
Instead, by the time my mom and I had landed, the plot line had already changed from pneumonia to a benign tumor to maybe cancer to definitely some kind of cancer to hodgkins lymphoma to potentially leukemia, and thanks to high-speed airplane wifi, I was logically already caught up with the press on the new realm my life was entering. Landing, however, didn’t burst the bubble of disbelief.
I had no idea that I would stay in Los Angeles for a week while all of the treatment details were ironed out, calling insurance companies and hospitals and universities and sperm banks, and in between those calls, I was constantly on the phone with someone or another sharing what had transpired over the last two days. As my friend said, I felt like I was running a country. I didn’t grasp anything in those hazy first days, every morsel of information sliding through my fingers as if they were coated with vaseline.
A that a month later, we would relocate to California for the spring to be closer to him during treatment.
When my friend called, I jumped back into my disbelief bubble and was completely, utterly calm. I didn’t flinch twice about this unexpected trip back home or about how urgently her mother was admitted to the hospital. I didn’t even panic when she said the word “heli-vac”, it was all going to be just fine. Her mom was 54 years young. She was totally healthy and happy and strong. She ran for God’s sake! It was all going to turn around quickly and she’ll have paid for last minute flights for the delightful excuse of eating squishy, seeded, New York bagels and crispy pizza slices and visiting us friends back home.
And then of course, the chapter of this book of life unveiled itself in a completely different way, and now here I am, drinking my coffee and eating buttered toast, writing until I have to squeeze into my black dress and my opaque black stockings and make my way over to the funeral home. I am seven months pregnant and my own mother is worried about how this stress will affect me and my baby. But I am not worried about me.
I am (thank God) strong and healthy and quite literally full of life at this exact moment. I am not the one to worry about.I am not my friend, who has been slapped across the face with the realization that her future children will not get to meet her mother or her father. She is the one who needs extra support and someone worrying about her well-being. She is the one about to bury her mother’s body in the wet October earth. I shutter at the thought.
Recently, another friend shared the joyous news that she is expecting, and another texted me to complain about how she is so ready to give birth. The first had been trying for a bit and the second had arrived at the part of pregnancy where it has been 9 months and 100 years of gestation. And as I spoke with them and felt their joy through the phone screen, their excitement, their anticipation, in complete juxtaposition to the mourning my other friend is going through, I thought about how cyclical life is and how you cannot stop the rhythm, no matter how badly you may want to when in pain.
The universe gives and the universe takes, it robs and it replenishes. And all that to say, what can I say? We can only pledge to do our best to remember these trying moments in the happiest of times and the most boring of times and to make the most of the one precious life we are given, day in and day out. It sounds almost farce, but to learn how to enjoy the feeling of the ocean breeze on a morning run, or to stop and close our eyes when the sun shines down too strong and we feel hot in her spotlight. To learn how to balance the hunger for more, more, more with the acceptance of being, of existing, in the present moment. To freeze frame the millisecond when someone you love catches your eye, or when a friend hugs you really tight, and to bank that spark for a cold, dreary, Monday morning. There is always more love to give.
May Natasha’s memory be a blessing, and may we never take life for granted.