Missing Pat

Before she died, I was just beginning to understand the likelihood that my second longest friendship with a woman as dear to me as a sister might be, is never going to be the same. We are not going to be running to Dallas to shop, she is not going to preside over any more late night suppers of red beans and rice, she is not going to scold me for not answering my phone or tease me with stories of my domestic incompetence. We're not going to spend long hours dissecting and re-dissecting what went wrong with old friendships or why marriages failed. I'm not going to nag her about her pickiness over food and disdain for chain restaurants. She isn't going to complain about my fear of interstate driving or rail about my stubborness. There'll be no more endless conversations about life, love, suicide, children, regrets, running out of time or the perils of getting old. She's the only friend I have who knows - and has kept - every one of my secrets. I have treasured her wisdom, loyalty, honesty and fierce independence for better than 40 years and I can't imagine life without her in it. But on this, her 4^th or 5^th day in ICU after an unexpected cardiac arrest that came after she'd already been hospitalized a week, I didn't seem to be able to find much light in the darkness. I began to be terribly afraid that I might not see her again and the thought was too paralyzing to consider. You get sick, you go to the hospital and you get fixed, I told myself, that's how it works. Any other outcome was unthinkable.

So I kept in touch with her daughters several times a day and each morning and evening I let myself in to tend her cat. I filled her food and water bowls and then laid on the couch for a half hour or so while she nudged and heat butted and stretched out on top of me, purring like a leaf blower. The house was cluttered with things left undone, eerily quiet and elegant but I refused to allow myself to think it was anything but temporary.

After another day or two, the doctors put in a permanent pacemaker and were cautiously optimistic that her heart was stabilized and her kidneys responding to treatment. They began discussing moving her to a rehab floor but plans stalled after her first night following the implant and she remained in ICU. Stable, the girls told me repeatedly, but very weak, in pain, and sometimes out of it. This didn't come on overnight, I told myself and them, and recovery isn't going to happen overnight. There was no choice except to keep on waiting and watching. To some degree or another, we all put our lives on hold and hoped for the best. After the first two weeks, the cat and I became joined at the hip and the girls sucked it up and carried on, each dividing their time between their own families and the hospital. All of us carried reality in our back pockets but none of us would take it out and look at it.

On an unseasonably warm November night, I got a call from her youngest telling me that her mother had asked for me. I think a part of me knew it was to say goodbye and I threw on my clothes and drove as fast as I dared in the darkness to the hospital. Whatever I was feeling was buried far too deep to face. I found myself holding onto my denial as if it were a lifeline. She'd developed an infection in her blood and a Cpap was breathing for her – the mask covered her face from chin to hairline. It was loud and looked uncomfortable as it forced air into her lungs and took out CO2. She couldn't talk, could barely move or even open her eyes. When I took her hand and squeezed, I saw a trace of recognition cross her face, just a shadow really, so brief I almost missed it. Her daughters were all there, holding on as best they could, grief stricken and trying to be brave for her and each other. I sat by the bed and held her hand as nurses and the respiratory therapist came and went. More IV's, more drugs, a quick visit from one of her doctors. Outside her 7th floor window, the lights of the city were bright and busy, traffic was thick with everyone on their way to somewhere else. Here there was only the ghastly sound of the Cpap, the flickering lights of the machines, the occasional musical-like alarms of the monitors keeping track of her heart rate and blood pressure and oxygen intake. The fluid in her lungs was slowly but surely drowning her. Her entire body, so heartbreakingly thin it was almost transparent, was a mass of bruises and dressings and discolorations. I fought off the thought that she'd never make it through the night but it came back, persistent and stronger, gnawing and scratching with renewed energy in every breath. I couldn't make any of it real. The girls has turned down the dialysis and signed a DNR order. There was nothing more to be done.

She died at 2:3o that morning. Her youngest texted me and though I saw the words, they were a jumble. I felt disconnected and abandoned and couldn't make sense of it. Morning came and I went to feed the cat and turn off the porch lights. The silence of the house was desperate - her signature was on everything, I realized - every painting, piece of crystal, stick of furniture and photograph was a reflection of her taste, every color was her choice. The idea that she would never return to the house she so loved was unbearable. I hugged and held and stroked the cat until she purred herself to sleep right on my chest. Here where we had spent so many days and evenings and random hours, I thought the tears might come but I left dry eyed. What I know in my mind hasn't quite reached my heart. This was a woman who rose above personal tragedy on a regular basis. For decades, she counseled, sheltered, mothered, scolded, reassured, praised, argued with and stood by me. She saw me through an alcoholic husband and an unfaithful one, gave me work, found the house I now live in, rescued me when my car died at 2 in the morning. She offered me a place in her family yet respected the distance between us and trespassed only when she thought it was absolutely necessary. She despaired of my stubbornness and didn't always understand my loyalty, believed in me more than I ever believed in myself, and never once gave up on me though she did like to remind me that she'd told me so on more than one occasion. Even then, she did it with a hug and a smile. When it came to honesty and integrity, she practiced what she preached and wished more folks would do the same, even when it was painful. She did not suffer fools gladly or otherwise but was rarely mean spirited about it. She loved her daughters with a hard and indestructible passion and missed her husband every single day but loss didn't stop her. She understood and accepted that life doesn't stop for death. She made room for everyone she cared about to be themselves, make their own choices whether she agreed or not, and ease the consequences of a bad decision whenever she could. She was a remarkable woman, a true and always reliable friend, a loving mother, a decent and fine businesswoman. She cared deeply about her family, her friends, her cats and her community.

She loved and was much loved in return.

Although the memory of my last visit with her is likely to stay with me for the rest of my life – it was grotesque and truly awful – it was also a gift I will always treasure and for which I will be eternally grateful. Other memories will, in time, become stronger and overcome those last few hours. Hours spent working crossword puzzles on her front porch, how she taught me to needlepoint and cross stitch, working together for a theatre renovation project with a different crisis every hour and the constant risk of a piece of plaster falling on our heads. Long drives to and from Dallas for market, regular Thursday evening suppers with our husbands at a favorite restaurant. Weekly cards and letters when I moved away, her delight at snow when she visited me in New England, elegant dinners in the French Quarter, long, lazy weekends at the lake, the hours we spent in the hospital waiting room the night her first daughter was born. Not all memories are happy - I watched her children grow up but I also watched her husband die long before his time. The good and bad times slipped through our fingers and then one day, we woke up old and tired, painfully aware of our own mortality and missing the friends we were losing.

Charlie Chaplin wrote “Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.”

Rest in peace, my dear and precious friend. We'll take it from here.