Friends

All through your life you have different friends. You have friends in your neighborhood, friends you make in grade school, junior high, high school, junior college, and college. Some you remember and some remember you. You make friends with your friends boyfriends and eventually husbands. You have friends in your job, close confidants and you have church friends.

Yesterday while making a search I ran across a daughter who was writing about her childhood and in particular her mother. Her mother was my friend.

Katherine and I met in Wichita as fledgling telephone operators and wannabe journalists. Katherine was from Oregon via California, she was a year old than me. She got married at 16 and divorced by the time I got to know her. We were as opposite as day and night. She was a smoker and I was not. She was outgoing and I was not. She was zany and well I was a little. She was the friendliest operator on the board and got compliments and I was the fastest and maybe not so folksy. We hung out together doing different activities like running in the River Run in "82. Even though she was a smoker, she still had a better time than me because she ran cross country in high school. She became the editor of our office newspaper and encouraged me to get involved. I loved it! Then eventually I took over that office newsletter and when our offices combined I remained the editor and helped get another office of operators get started on their newsletter.

She didn't join the union and I did. She crossed my picket line when we had a strike. People didn't like her so much there after, yet we remained friends. She introduced me to a string of losers for dates. She married her second husband in "83 and had the cutest children. She bought her house on the west side of Wichita in an auction. I went over to her house and still can remember what it looked like on the inside. I traveled to Oklahoma once to see her in laws and meet yet another guy (loser) to go to the Oklahoma State Fair.

Another friend (my best friend in college and still) introduced me to L in '87. We married in '88. I quit my job in '89. I would write to Katherine and called her once. She had her last child, Sarah in 1990. The last time I saw Katherine was 12 1/2 years ago. I had 2 year old S and I was pregnant with J. Sarah was the daughter who wrote about her mom/parents and childhood. I never saw her again.

Katherine died in 2002 with lung cancer. She was only 48.
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Sarah wrote about her mom being diagnosed with lung cancer in a blog. Each time I read it tears come to my eyes. Sarah wrote from the heart. Her parents divorced and again her words touched me. I had lost touch with Katherine during those years. Sarah went through a messy divorce, the remarriage of her dad, and eventually the death of her mother. She was uprooted from her school and when she went to high school she tried to commit suicide. Her family life was upsetting and now she has moved away from Kansas to Oregon to go to college. She is starting a fresh new life.

Sarah is a lot like her mom in looks. She is a marketing major with journalism as an emphasis. Just like Katherine wanted to be.

But unlike Katherine she is a non-smoker. She stated in her blog that she watched her mother smoke through her cancer diagnosis. During her chemotherapy, Katherine continued to smoke. The cancer had left her lungs. But then it was found in other parts of her body her brain, lymph nodes and her liver. She had radiation and still continued to smoke. She took steroids and became puffy that no one recognized her. She had trouble speaking and it hurt when Sarah tried to hug her or touch her. She entered hospice care then died in Sept. 2002 at the age of 48. Sarah was only 12.

Sarah wrote about her friends whom she lost contract with in middle school. She said that most of them took up smoking and they are only 18 years old.

Quote: It breaks my heart when I imagine their life thirty years from now. I hope for their own sake they don't have children. They won't live to see them graduate.

Powerful writing!! It's from the heart. Think about it.