Our medical assistant in the clinic offered me half a piece of gum the other day and that action nearly brought me to tears. My dad never chewed a whole piece of gum-ever. He would rip each piece in half and sometimes even quarters and chew it. He hated giving me a whole piece of gum, to him that was a waste. My sense of loss is greatest when I pick up the phone and see the caller ID with his name but know that it isn't him on the other end.
Grief is tempered by time but it doesn't ever really go away. Some days it is less and other days more. Some days I can distinctly recall every moment in agonizing detail of my mother-in-law's last evening. I suppose I will always feels some sense of responsibility, maybe if I had done something differently she would be here with us. Rationally I know better but ration doesn't always prevail. My sense of loss for my mother-in-law is greatest when I watch the girls at their activities and I know how much she would have enjoyed being there cheering (okay screaming) for them.
Finally, I think of the friends I have lost. It doesn't seem right to write that I have lost friends because they were far too young. Scott was my friend. Also my first "real" boyfriend, the one I served detention with for kissing him in our Christian school hallway. We remained good friends following graduation and forever he will hold a special place in my heart. The last conversation I had with him before he passed away was when he was visiting in Pennsylvania from South Carolina. We hung out for the day with a bunch of friends and that evening as I went to say goodbye to him he hugged me and said, "You know I love you, don't you?" I told him that I loved him too. I will always be grateful that I had that conversation with him. Losing him was unexpected and it was that moment when a young person (me) realized for the first time that they were not invincible. I have thought of him so often over the years, wondered what he would be like now. Would he be married, have kids? The one thing I have always carried with me since then is to cherish your friends. Love them, enjoy them and never let an opportunity to pass to tell them how much they mean to you.
Heather was my irreverent friend from ninth and tenth grade. She would laugh at things that no one else found funny. She delighted in making me blush. She saved me from being too serious. She died a few months ago of undiagnosed MS to the brain. Her precious daughter, Molly is a year older than Abigail and I can remember just how Heather looked with Molly perched on her hip nine years ago. She delighted in being a mom and a wife. Several times I have sat down to write Molly and her brother, Ian, a letter about their mom since they will never know what she was like during those high school years. So far each attempt has caused more tears than writing and so it is not yet finished.
Trisha was a nursing instructor with me in Ohio. We became close friends when we were clinical instructors for senior nursing students. We ate lunch together every Thursday and Friday and became fast friends. She amazed me with her knowledge of the heart. She had literally put herself through school while working full-time. She got her RN first, then her BSN and finally her NP. After we left Ohio, we kept in touch and she came to see us the summer after we moved to Atlanta. We had a great time visiting Olympic Park and the CNN center and just talking and laughing. Less than a year later and two months after she finished getting her NP, she was killed in a car accident with her six year old niece, Abbey. I still keep her emails in my inbox to read because they were always so positive and encouraging.
As painful as my losses have been and as never ending as the grief has seemed at times, I would never have wanted to not know them, to not have them be a part of my life. What is the saying?, "it is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all."
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