Home Opener, 2014

Five years ago today, I spent the day in Providence with my friend Marie.

I met Marie during our freshman year in high school, so by April 2014 we were Fifty Year Friends. And a lot of that Fifty Year Friendship was spent hanging around talking. We liked talking family and friends. We liked talking books. We liked talking politics. And we liked talking baseball.

This trip to Providence was so that we could watch the Red Sox Home Opener together.

Since we couldn’t be at the game, I brought Fenway Franks, Cracker Jacks, and a package of Hoods Sports Bars, a chocolate covered vanilla ice cream nothing that is a must when you’re at Fenway Park.

The Red Sox had won the World Series in 2013, so the Home Opener came with bigger than usual ceremony and hoopla, including the distribution of the championship rings.

Marie was housebound by this point. More specifically, second-floor-bound. But she managed to make it from her bedroom into the little second-floor TV room to watch the game with me.

When I was downstairs in the kitchen, preparing our feast, I asked Marie’s daughter – a nurse – what was going on.

It was pretty clear to me that Marie was end-stage.

“They don’t ask.” Anne shook her head. “And I don’t tell.”

The three of us watched the opening ceremony and the game, chatting during much of it. Marie was barely eating at this point, but she managed to get down most of her hot dog and Sports Bar. She dozed in and out.

I hung around for dinner – Chinese food, brought in by an old friend of Marie and her husband, John. Jenna, like me, was a widow. Her husband had died a year before, mine two months earlier.

After dinner, John drove me to the train station. We beat around the bush a bit, but I knew that he knew. And he knew that I knew that he knew. Marie didn’t have long.

The next time I saw Marie, a week later, she was out of her home and in hospice.

I visited her there a few times, Marie drifting in and out of lucidity. Sometimes herself – wanting to know what was going on with you – and other times pretty much out of it. (Which I had pretty much gotten used to during my husband’s last days.)

The last time I saw Marie was on Saturday, April 19th.

Still in and out, more out than in.

Marie’s genius was for family and friendship, and there was a steady stream of friends and family coming in and out. But I hung in, just being there.

We were able to talk a bit.

I asked Marie whether it was scary, and she said no. She told me that she was waiting for a signal from her parents that it was time. I told her I loved her, and how much our Fifty Year Friendship had meant to me.

I was wearing a pink flowered challis scarf.

Marie told me that she loved that scarf. “You’ve had that a long time.”

“Yes,” I told her, “About 10 years.”

“No,” she said. “You’ve had it a lot longer.”

When I got home that night, I noticed a picture of me and my sibs that was taken at my mother’s 65th birthday party. That would have been in 1984. So, I’d had the scarf for at least 30 years.

A friend who knows your clothing better than you do is a real friend…

I wept all the way on that drive back to Boston.

That night, Marie was put under palliative sedation. So no more visitors, other than her husband, kids and sister. She died the following week.

After we learned Marie had died, I was on the phone with another high school friend.

Kim had seen Marie in hospice shortly after I had left.

As I said, Marie was in and out of lucidity, but here’s what she asked Kim:

“Do you think I’ll be well enough to go to Ireland with Maureen to bring Jim’s ashes?”

Obviously, this was an out of it moment. But what can you say about a friend who, on her deathbed, is showing her love and concern for you?

That, my friend, is a friend.

2014 was a really rotten year.

I lost my husband. I lost Marie.

And to cap it all off, the Red Sox ended up in the cellar of the AL East.

I had to look it up, but they lost that Home Opener that we’d watched together, too.

Five years goes fast.

Life goes on, and it’s good.

John and Jenna are married now.

Last year, the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 2013.

Marie would have really liked that team.

Today, I’m wearing that scarf in her honor.

Damn, I miss my Fifty Year Friend..