Life

by Mom101 on 08.30.11
in introspection, things that make you go argh

She spent her last month in the ICU, locked in battle with that tenacious fucker, Cancer. I hear it wasn’t pretty. Cancer never fights fair. Perhaps it’s best that it ended Saturday.

Julie wasn’t a close friend, but we’d known each other since childhood. We still saw each other a few times a year, when the high school friends joined up to toast to the holidays or celebrate a homecoming.

Thalia and her oldest daughter were born just a few weeks apart. New Year’s 2005, we rocked our babies to sleep in their car seats, leaving them in a quiet room to the back of the loft. We compared notes about nursing and sleep schedules and exhaustion and baby socks that never stay on. But when we shut the door behind us, I remember thinking we were just two old friends at a party, drinking champagne and dancing badly to Blondie. Even if we had to keep listening for the cries of babies over the beat.

My strongest memory of her was from nearly 30 years earlier. My 8th birthday party. A country house with a very cold swimming pool.

While five of us all stood around arguing about who would go in first and whether it was too cold and were our towels big enough and I’ll go in if you go in, and should we hold hands–she simply jumped.

We should all do that more.

Goodbye Julie.

{22 Comments}

22 thoughts on “Life”

  1. It breaks my heart when a mother with young ones loses her cancer battle. I am so sorry.

  6. Ugh – so sad! I will send some prayers skyward for her kids. She sounds like a hot shit, though, and those people always imbue their kids with their own special spirit so I am hoping that will carry them through……

  8. This makes me so sad. Cancer takes way too moms (including my own). At 34 I felt lost without my mom, I can’t imagine how a child feels.

  9. I’m sorry for the loss of your friend and my thoughts and prayers are with her family. Cancer sucks. It took my mom too.

  17. I’m so sorry for your loss and for Julie’s family. It is indeed a terrible disease.

  18. This is a beautiful tribute. It is so very jarring to hear of her death, both from the perspective of a peer and of a mother. I am sorry for all concerned. Sending good thoughts to her husband, daughter, and friends.

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