My mind has been a little strange lately. All kinds of memories come to me, sometimes in long streams like videos, and other times just snippets like photographs that describe the moment but leave out what happened just before or came right after. I know what has opened this stream of consciousness. I am at that age when my friends and contemporaries are dying off routinely. My Christmas card list grows shorter every year.
Karen, my friend of over 30 years, died May 1, 2017. Another hole in the fabric of my life. I can’t explain our relationship. Once, I was closer to her than to any person alive. She lived with me for three to four year stretches at a time. She would be here and then move out without warning. Sometimes she had a good reason. She bought herself a townhouse in Tampa, but she could not bring herself to tell me until three weeks before she moved out. Another time she moved to Springfield, Pennsylvania to live with her sister but a few years later, asked if she could come back when that didn’t work out.
There were also periods of silence that could last years. When she did not speak to me it was never because I did something to Karen, but rather because of the guilt she felt for hurting me. A perfect example is the months before she died. I last saw Karen at Christmas when I stopped by to drop off a Christmas gift for her. I didn’t hear from her again until she was last hospitalized in April, two weeks before she died. She told me that she was embarrassed because she did not have a gift for me, and because she could not invite me to her home over the Christmas holidays. She lived with her oldest son and he resented me.
Losing Karen was a shock. I have been aware of my mortality for some years, but that really brought it home. How much longer do I have? Is the life I am living all there is? Do I have anything except broken relationships to mark my life? I am estranged from nearly everyone I loved. I cannot remember the last time someone touched me. Was it Karen when she kissed me goodbye?
That same night I resolved to change my circumstances. The volunteer organization to which I belong eats up 70 percent of my waking life and leaves me little time for anything else. For that reason, I resigned from all of my offices. Now, there is nothing to stop me from traveling cross country, repairing old relationships, making new friends and enjoying new experiences. I need to do this. I must do this or I will drown in self-pity and self-contempt.
Photo: Karen (seated) and me, 2004
dottieriley 