The Storyteller...

The last thing you want to hear someone you love to say is “I thought I’d have more time.” It is a sentence that carries with it so many different emotions. There are hidden tones of remorse, shades of regret, and more than anything a deep sense of fear for the future they didn’t plan on having. This is what happened to me this weekend. My dearest friend in the world sitting across from me as we went over the details of her recent diagnosis of stage four colon and liver cancer.

At eighteen when we met, we had all the time in the world. There were concerts to go to, hearts to break and be broken, and life was just beginning to pick up speed. In our early thirties, we were each other’s maid of honors, then godmother’s to firstborn sons and sounding boards to one another when life became prickly or just plain hard. We had each other’s history and could pull up references to back up our advice to one another. I had this insane ability to remember our antics of youth, still crystal clear. We would laugh at the fact I couldn't remember crap in the present day but could recall the past vividly.

As our life unfolded into our late thirties and forties, it seemed as if those years were dictated by loss. Physically, mentally and emotionally, we were constantly coming up for air. Whether it was the realization that marriage, motherhood, and the state of our existence was at times an overwhelming disappointment. Or the tragic death of my father, which shook us to our core...we were there for one another. Ready and waiting in the wings several states away. Often just showing up on each other's doorsteps before the call out for help was made, we would just know.

Fast forward to now, on her back porch with a glass of red wine discussing how to navigate her treatment plan, dancing around the words neither of us could bring ourselves to say. She had just turned fifty this past September, I am following her into the next decade this coming April. This was a conversation much too premature, much too shocking, much too scary to be having. I struggled to remain composed as she calmly discussed getting her will together. Words felt like play-doh in my mouth as I ask very few questions, realizing my job right now was to simply listen.

"You have to help me now." She said with a tone that meant what was about to slowly fall from her lips would be a shift in her worries, unloading of sorts from the weights that wrapped around her, enveloping her as a heavy mink stole. She needed to be able to breathe easier, deeper, and more freely. To do this, she needed me, her trusted Huckleberry to release her from the invisible chains of worry and guilt that she was no longer...enough. Whatever her burden was, she needed me to lift it.

"Here, take this," she said quietly as she pulled from behind a weathered and worn little black book. "Is that...the book?" I said with a genuine laugh, "You still have that same little book? After all of these years?" I gasp, "Wow girl, just when I thought you couldn't surprise me anymore." I said reaching for it with hesitation and reverence, much like being given the Holy Grail.

She laughed earnestly, yet quietly..."It's important to me that the boys know who I was before I became their Mom. Before life downsized me to a mere mortal." she said with a wry smile as she slid the book to me. She had always had this book, as long as I could recall, a lifetime it seemed. Jotting down what she felt to be sacred, poignant moments worth preserving. My hand reached out to take it, gently caressing its cover, my fingers tracing edges. Within its boundaries laid stories of mischief and magic, tragedy and triumph. The aching beauty of falling in love, the black despair of losing it. Of tossing a handful of dirt into a bottomless pit, saying goodbye, and then walking away forever.

This little black book was our story, our past. "There's no reason for me to have this you know" I uttered in a voice that betrayed me in how guttural it sounded "You have plenty of time to tell them yourself." I looked at her in the dark, the moon cascading over her shoulders, shrouding her in almost an ethereal glow, and had to look away. "You've always sucked at lying my love." as she reached out to turn my face back towards her "I need you to do this for me. I can't ask him...he's just not strong enough, besides the boys will need him to be their father, not a storyteller.

"You have always been the narrator for us.” She paused to take the moment in...” Just do me one last favor, make me the hero before it’s said and done …would ya?" she said with a smile that made me want to burn this moment into my brain, knowing that if I could do nothing else to control what was happening around us, I could do my best to make this right for her. "Of course, sweet girl...of course." as I gently squeezed her hand.

"You're going to need this." She said, and from her pocket, she withdrew a bulging envelope. "There's more?" I asked trying to perk my voice up as I peeked inside. It was full of tattered ones, fives, twenties, and several hundred-dollar bills. “Paying me for my silence? I asked incredulously still trying hard to keep my voice light and far from the sound of fear and desperation in the pit of my stomach. "No," she laughed softly "I've been saving for a rainy day. I think it’s about 20 grand by now... and well darlin', it looks like the storm clouds are slowly rolling in."

She seemed to notice my lost blank stare, my need for some guidance of my own, reassurance that I was truly up to her challenge. "I want you to show them as much of what's written in those pages as only you can. Splurge! Buy the front row VIP seats at the concert, you know, the ones most people would die for! The ones that Ticketmaster took all the joy out of waiting in line for overnight, remember?" We both laughed and I refilled our wine glasses as we recanted waiting in line for Grateful Dead tickets back in the days of the long-ago lottery to get the best seats.

"That was the only time I've ever sat that close, what was it second row?" I asked. She thought for a moment, "I think so, but then there was the time you got lost in Kentucky at Cardinal Stadium!" she added. "Oh, Lord! Yes!" I said with an outward cackle of laughter "Thank God for that sweet group of hippies that adopted me! That's the only reason I got up to the stage, I was so very lost!" I laughed again, savoring the memory.

"You were on a long strange trip for sure.” she said "I sat up in our designated seats, hoping you'd find me up there all by myself. Well, except for that one ridiculous drunk that kept singing the words all wrong!" her laughter more full of energy than I'd heard all night, "I had no idea how I would call your mom and tell her that I had lost you, in Kentucky, at a Dead concert, especially since we had lied to get you there!" We both fell into a giggle fit that was so needed at that moment.

"Listening to these stories, you may want to reconsider your request." I stammered jokingly, slowly coming back around to our current setting. Slowly realizing I couldn't remember a time she hadn't been a part of my life. "Nope!" She raised her glass in a toast "You'll do fine, I have faith."

"I remember the feeling of thinking the best meant the front row," she reminisced then paused, measuring her words "...and in the beginning, the excitement will outweigh the reality. You're so caught up in it, you don't even realize that you're shoehorned into a designated space in life...All crammed in, shoulder to shoulder, no room to move, confined. Trapped in the best that money can buy...up-close up and personal! That's what I want you to show them first."

She slid back in her large wicker chair and pulled the frayed afghan up around her shoulders. Retracing her words in her mind, whispering to herself, and maybe the heavens "Trapped in what you thought was perfection at first..."

Coming back around she sat up straight, put her elbows on her knees, and leaned in like she was about to share a secret, "Then buy them the nose bleed seats. Far away, maybe on the upper deck, where they can see it all. Up in the dark away from the blinding lights, up where they can dance freely in their own space. Room to move, room to breathe it all in. Take them to a place where they can see the whole stage, not just what's right in front of them."

She slowly flicked a lighter and cocked her head, bangs cascading across her eyes. Masterfully she lit the end of what I'm sure would bring her some relief from the pain she'd never tell me she was in. The snap of the blaze, then the familiar smell wafting through the air gave my mind just the permission it must have needed to gather myself. I too sat back in my chair, readjusting my position to be more relaxed.

My body felt stiff like I had been sitting on the edge of a deep well, perched and ridged, trying not to fall in. I didn't realize just how far up I'd been holding my shoulders until I leaned back, then I took a deep breath in, wistfully laughing at the irony of the moment. At 18 we shared in this ritual to escape, and now here we were thirty years later and she's using it to stay as long as she can. In a strained voice that I've heard for all my days, she slowly exhaled and began to speak again as smoke circled and loomed around us.

"Teach them to understand that life has a way of fooling you. You may be in the midst of what they think is the best of what's around, but that's only because you're being short-sighted." she then proceeded to take a deep cleansing breath, like she was about to say something painful, "The real lesson in life may mean getting some distance from it. It means appreciating the whole story, the big picture." With that, she closed her eyes as I watched a few tears roll down her cheeks, down the angles of her now chiseled sunken face. I had to look away, off into the woods that surrounded her.

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t suck the few tears that fell back into my eyes, wanting to remain the ever-strong, stalwart best friend. As I watched her drift off into a thought that crossed her mind, I could see, feel, and almost smell the look of fear that washed over her face. It rattled me to my core that she was already asking the questions I had yet to be able to even let myself think, making plans for a future that she would not play a part in. This would be the first night of many to come on a journey neither of us ever imagined we would go on. I am dragging my feet and refusing to begin to make the lists or make the plans. I am in no hurry to dismantle her yet…

I thought I’d have more time.