Recently I have run into a few friends who, for whatever reason, didn’t know Janet had died of cancer in January.
Strangely enough, I have not had any trouble telling them the bad news. I did not feel like tears were welling up; I did not feel flushed; I did not have any trouble forming the words in my head I wanted to use.
I did, however, feel terribly sad for the friends I had to tell that Janet was gone. The shock in their eyes made me want to give them a hug. When Janet went away, she left a void in this world. She accepted everyone for the way they were. No one ever shocked her. In her job as a probation officer she met all forms of human life, and they were okay to her.
But I have realized there is something else which makes me more concerned for the person I just had to tell my wife is gone. I can tell they fear they have made me sad when I restate a fact I wish was not true. This simply is not the case. Everyone has life to live, problems to solve and obligations to fulfill. Someone may dear to us even though we don’t see them maybe for months at a time.
This was particularly true for one man who was our first friend in Florida who was not a relative of Janet’s. He was a neighbor who would come by the house and invited me to go on a walk through the neighborhood. We talked about things we were interested and not what the relatives wanted to talk about. Janet and I went to his wedding and became friends with his wife who was as easy going and friendly as he was. He had eleven wonderful years with his wife before she passed away.
I thought I had either called or left a message about Janet or I had e-mailed him. When he was not at the memorial service I didn’t think anything about it because he does travel a lot to visit with his friends and family. It’s only in the last few weeks that I realized I hadn’t heard from him and I felt guilty that I had not contacted him again. I left a phone message for him, and the next day he called to say he had not heard. We set up a time to have dinner out somewhere.
He apologized over and over again, and I told him not to worry about it. For one thing, his computer shut down months ago so he may have missed the e-mail. We had a nice long dinner and caught up on everything. As we left the restaurant he apologized again. I gave him a hug and reassured him that Janet always loved him, and I will always love him as a friend. The definition of friendship is that even if you are separated for a period of time, when you meet again, it’s as though no time had passed at all.
I don’t want anyone to grieve that they were not there at the end of Janet’s life. I want them to celebrate the times they were with her when she was here.