A Short But Everlasting Friendship

Nine months ago, I met Dorothy. A lovely 90-year old lady who needed somebody to transport her to her eye surgery appointments. We hit it off immediately, making each other laugh and learning about each other while navigating the hospital system. She asked if I would continue to run errands for her and I made it a point to visit with her in addition to getting her groceries and driving her to appointments. Less than a month after meeting her, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. It was a quite a blow, mainly because she was so alive, coherent, independent and even driving up until the point when she had to carry oxygen around. And it was no small tidbit that my grandmother had just died from it that same month, just 4 days before I was to fly out for a visit.

I loved chatting with Dorothy and what I loved most was that she let me ask her anything (and anyone who knows me knows that I never run out of questions!). So we had great conversations about her mindset about death, her philosophies about what happens next, her beliefs and opinions about most everything. She often said I made her think. One time we talked about religion (neither of us being religious) and I told her that I chose to believe there’s this stream of energy that we are connected to; I gave the example of plugging something into the socket and if you unplug it, it doesn’t mean the electricity goes away. So death was just plugging back into that constant non-physical energy that we’re all a part of. She was interested in that idea and seemed to appreciate talking about death in that way instead of ignoring the topic altogether as I’m sure most people did.

We talked a lot about her past and being someone who is a travel junkie, I loved hearing about her worldliness. She moved to Berlin after WWII and then on to Geneva, Switzerland for 13 more years. She’s the only person I know who’s been to Tibet, and I squeezed as much information from her about that trip as she could remember.  She was open-minded and progressive for her time, practicing yoga way before there was a studio on every corner, and never did a day go by without a complete read of the daily newspaper. As a result, we had some of the best conversations that entertained us both.

A week before she died, she had become mostly bedridden. Her daughter was with her from Vermont and called to ask if I’d sit with her mom while she went out. Dorothy was sleeping for the first half of my visit, but when she woke up she was totally coherent and willing to let me sit with her and chat.  I said, “Now you know you don’t have to answer this…” to which she replied “uh-oh.” Which made us both laugh. I told her that when she gets to where she’s going, she probably won’t be sending postcards. So maybe she can send something we agree on to let me know that she got there and that it’s magnificent. I said the only thing I could think of was a crow in my yard because I see tons of crows around, but never have I seen one in my yard. She paused and looked perplexed which made me think perhaps I had crossed a line. She said, “Well, I don’t think I can do a crow.” I told her that of course she could because she’d have super powers and could do anything, completely missing the point. She said again, no not a crow. “Let me think what it could be…how about a meadowlark?” A much more beautiful and symbolic offering. She told me a story about living in Nebraska and how her mother loved meadowlarks and what beautiful songs they sang. She made me get the dictionary and look it up to find a picture so I knew what it looked like. And that became our little agreement; we could just say Meadowlark and know we had something sly going on between us.

After she died, I was at someone’s house where I saw plenty of crows in the yard and I chuckled thinking Dorothy was playing a joke on me. I’m assuming a meadowlark will come into my world in the weirdest way, at the perfect time when I’m not looking for it. Most importantly though, I’m thrilled that I was present enough to fully appreciate our short friendship. That I took time to visit her, to talk about things more fulfilling than “what’s for lunch,” and that our paths crossed in the first place. And best of all, I’ve been positively impacted by such a lovely friendship.