I look down at the note under by computer, written on a napkin in blue ink tending toward purple. It says "John at River City." I have to wait for the name to ring a bell, the information to compute.

Georgiann died this morning.

I got an unknown number on my cell phone and saw there was a message. It was Al, her husband. Why does it make me feel so good that he’d call me – only hours after. Did Georgiann consider me that good of a friend? It has made me feel good all along. Georgiann would write me and say “I want you to know before it goes on Caring Bridge.” She called me when she could barely speak. I’m so thankful that she felt that way about me. It’s kind of like the way Sally would say, “This is my friend, Margaret.” The way she said it at the last bar-b-cue she had. There was such an emphasis on my friend. I don’t recall now it being more than that – not best friend or oldest friend, but maybe it was.

I am likely Georgiann’s oldest friend. I used to say that about Sally – she’s my oldest friend. I guess she was my oldest friend of long-standing, more a constant than Georgiann, but Georgiann was always there. We were never “not friends.” She was there at important moments after our youth: in college, for a book signing of The Grace Trilogy, for the shop, for my dad’s wake. She saw my house. I saw hers. We had dinner together, her and Al and me and Donny. Donny liked Al so much. She invited me over after she got the news. Served me coffee and bars a neighbor had brought. I had two books in my car. Broken Open and a little hard-cover of love poems. I decided on the love poems. Broken Open seemed more for the living than the dying. She was about to be broken open. She’d know all about that. In a way she already did.

Cancer. It does that to you.

The funny things that go through your mind.

Walking home from my companioning job I was already beseeching Georgiann – then I stopped. Not yet. Not now. “Let her rest.” Let her transition. These things went through my mind and I feel her loss in my stomach.

I told my companion the news, shed a few tears, and we returned to making cabbage rolls. “Sally,” I told her, died the day after your birthday. Georgiann has died on Henry’s birthday.” I was thinking how I’d always remember. I would not ever forget the day she died. Each year on Henry’s birthday, I’ll remember. She was just days away from turning 55. I would always say, “We were born five days apart in the same hospital. Grew up two doors apart.”

She was creative and kind and never judged – not even in that small way you do so unconsciously of making a person feel bad that you haven’t kept it touch. I remember wondering, after her last visit to the coffee shop, if I’d said something. I’d talked about A Course of Love and about living with purpose. I’ve wondered if she stayed religious. Now I suspect not. She didn’t want a viewing…didn’t want, her husband said, “to be remembered like that.” She’ll be cremated and there’ll be a gathering at the house. Her kids had moved home. Al had tears in his voice. I told him, “I can’t even imagine. I’ve grieved my dad, but to lose a partner. To have it happen so fast.”

Does it feel fast to him? Six months? Four felt so long with Dad. Then so short.

I was already feeling “off” about yesterday’s post. As if the exploration of death from a journalistic view was not “me.” I was just so taken that this journalist woman said, “I didn’t have a clue,” that she admitted she hadn’t changed her life – had just kept calling on Sunday’s, visiting every few months. That she didn’t “know” until she saw her dad and sister clinging to each other at the funeral. Hadn’t known the ordeal they’d been through. I felt relieved to hear that acknowledgment, that truth. Maybe I secretly needed to hear that someone could observe the ordeal nature of it in another. That’s all. Not that it’s “bad” to have been through the ordeal, (or not to) but that it’s valuable, and so, so tender. To cling. To cling as your loved one dies, and to cling afterwards to those who stood with you through the ordeal of the clinging. The care of the body and soul. To be so changed. To be so in love. To be so alive.

February 6

The last Caring Bridge post stung my nose and made tears trickle from the corners of my eye – my left – tears fall there first. I’ve wondered when I’d begin to hear acceptance, the end of trying, and now that I hear it, what I’ve suspected is near is more real and the tears begin like a vigil. I sniff. My friend is a little more pain free due to better drugs and sleeps 21 hours a day. Her family waits for those hours when she opens her blue eyes. I suspect I should have sent her, and read, Anne Lamott’s funny book about cancer. I could never think of damn amusing thing to say, or much of anything else.

I remember when the medical folks still worried over giving my dad drugs that were addictive. When he still worried. And when he quit. All slow steps to the acceptance you think you already feel and realize then is so partial. So inadequate. You are not prepared. You are not ready.

I don’t speak much here of Jesus messages but I’ve been held by grief again lately if in a different way – the way of realizing what a companion it’s been – how it stands at each turning point of my life. One remembrance that came to me was of how, when A Course of Love (the first book) was complete, and I was lonely for that voice that had accompanied me through my days, and wrote for the first time, “Dear Jesus,” and wrote, “You have dictated this course through me – now – will you just talk to me?” That very first time that Jesus addressed me directly, he spoke of grief:

December 1999

Death and grief are all around you now, not to the extent that you are blinded by your own grief, but to the extent that you are called to examine the death of some and the grief of others, the change happening to some and the grief it causes. You feel as if you accept death and change but do not want to accept grief and want to help others through grief.

What lies beyond grief but new life? The deaths you perceive are deaths of the physical body. You perceive not the death that truly occurs within the life of those grieving. Those grieving are those who experience death, not those who physically leave the world. In that experience of death through grief resurrection awaits. In the experience of my death were those who loved me resurrected along with me. Do you begin to understand?

Death occurs continuously calling those who experience death to resurrect to life. It is those who experience grief (the poor in spirit) who abide in the cave of death and have before them the choice to roll back the stone or to stay buried. Your life here is a burial in the cave of matter until you choose to make it otherwise. Death calls you to make it otherwise. Each death is a great gift of creation as was my own. And each of you, young and old, rich and poor, are visited by death. No one is excluded from this gift as no one was excluded from my own gift so many years ago.

For those of us grieving, and for Georgiann, the stilled heart seeing God~

The Beatitudes

How blest are the poor in spirit: the reign of God is theirs.
Blest too are the sorrowing; they shall be consoled.
[Blest are the lowly, they shall inherit the land.]
Blest are they who hunger and thirst for holiness;
They shall have their fill.
Blest are they who show mercy;
Mercy shall be theirs.
Blest are the single-hearted
For they shall see God.
Blest too the peacemakers; they
Shall be called sons of God.
Blest are those persecuted for holiness’ sake;
The reign of God is theirs.
Blest are you when they insult you and persecute and utter every kind of slander against you because of me.
Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven;
They persecuted the prophets before
You in the very same way.