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When A Friend Dies

Madlynn Haber

    Nancy died in early March. “Please take some flowers home with you,” her sister says to me at her memorial luncheon. She says it as if she is asking me to do her a favor. I take some home and place them in a small vase on my window sill. I watch them bloom more fully the next day. I think I should throw them away before they start to whither and die. I know that in a day or two they will die, like Nancy did.
    I can’t quite believe it. The last time I saw her she looked pretty bad. She had a crooked wig on her head and very pronounced limp. She walked very slowly. Part way through the lunch we were having, with a small giggle she asked the waitress for an extra slice of bread to sop up the soup that was left in her bowl. I remember how much she enjoyed that soup.
    There were three of us at lunch, old friends, single mothers. We had known each other through the years of raising our children all now in their twenties. We had shared many holidays, birthday parties, play dates and outings. We saw each other less frequently now that our children had lives of their own. Nancy had been sick for a good while before that lunch date.
    Had it been me all the wretched details of the illness, it’s treatment and the ups and downs of its progression, would have poured out all over the lunch table. Nancy kept it all to herself as she enjoyed her soup. It would turn out to be that last time I would see her. We made plans for her to come to dinner at my house over the holidays but by then she was in the hospital and by early March she was dead.
    I remember how much she loved a good cup of coffee and how freely she asked for an extra slice of cake at a birthday party. Her laugh was always more of a giggle. She always said yes to an invitation for a meal or a get together. She gave my daughter a nickname and was good natured about my daughter’s insistence at age four that she stop calling her that. She took everything with a smile. I rarely heard her complain and knew nothing of her pain. The pain of her illness or the pain in her life. I try not to think that I should have invited her more often. I know I should have gone to see her in the hospital.
    I don’t know what to do with people when they die. I don’t believe Nancy isn’t going to call, come over for a chat or to share a meal ever again. She had a small place in my life. I am holding that space empty now.
    There was a snow storm on the day of her funeral. Her family made the memorial luncheon a few weeks later for all the friends and family who couldn’t make it through the storm. There, I am able to grieve with her sisters and cry with her children who ache for their lost mother. She deserves to be mourned and missed. We share photos. In each one Nancy has a warm, soft, twinkly, smile. After the flowers wilt, I take a small photo of Nancy put it in a plastic frame and place it safely on the side of my refrigerator. I don’t know what else to do when a friend dies.

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