Home Opener

Later today, I'll be watching the Red Sox Home Opener. I've been watching at least a couple of innings of each game so far. Mixed results so far, but that's the Red Sox. That's baseball. You definitely can't win 'em all.

For whatever reason, I've been thinking about watching the Home Opener in 2014.

April 4, 2014.

Less than two months after my husband's death, I took the train down to Providence to watch the game with my wonderful friend Marie. Marie was dying.

During their illnesses - both had cancer - Jim would often tell me, "Marie has it worse than I do." And Marie would often say, "Jim has it worse than I do."

Turns out they were both right.

Marie and I met our freshman year in high school, so by 2014, we'd been friends for 50 years.

We shared a love of politics, books, history, talking, and sports. Especially baseball. Especially the Red Sox.

For our Home Opener, I brought lunch: hot dogs, Cracker Jack, and Hood Sports Bars (chocolate covered vanilla ice cream). I even bought a little cooler to carry those Sports Bars in.

Marie was dying.

She managed to get part of a hot dog down, and a Sports Bar. She managed to make it through most of the game.

We talked Red Sox. In 2013, they'd won the World Series. So opening day was a big deal. Over the years, we'd gone to an occasional game together, and, during the season, when we talked we usually covered the Red Sox in our conversations. 

Marie was dying. She hadn't yet been declared terminal. No one had said that 'this is it.' Yet. Marie was (clearly) dying.

I stayed for dinner. Chinese take out. Marie was so tired, so weak. She kept drifting off. Marie was dying.

Marie's husband drove me to the train, and we talked around things. Later that evening, we exchanged emails, where we didn't talk around things.

Did I see Marie two more times? Three? I'm pretty sure I went down to Providence at least twice during those last couple of weeks. 

The week after the home opener, Marie was admitted to hospice.

The last time I saw her was Saturday, April 19th. Holy Saturday. Easter was late that year. Even later than this year. 

We talked about families. Her kids, mostly. About friends. About dying. 

Marie told me it wasn't scary. But that she was waiting. Waiting to hear something from her parents, both of them long dead. (Her mother died in 1999, her father in 2001, a few months before my mother. My father - the person who gave me my love of baseball - was long, long dead. He'd died in 1971. When Marie's parents came to the wake, they gave my mother a Mass card with $15 in it. There was some tradition of giving the widow cash - was it Irish? Marie's parents were both the children of immigrants - and my mother got cash from some others, as well. I remember wondering whether the people who gave money thought we were so destitute that we needed help with groceries. My mother just told me it was something that some people do. For all the wakes my father went to - and he was a true, Irish sports page devouring wake-goer - and I went to a few with him, I don't remember him giving anyone an envelope with any money in it. But, of course, it's not something he would have mentioned.)

While I was visiting Marie in hospice, she drifted in and out. People drifted in and out, too. Marie had a large extended family, and a ton of friends. (Her particular genius was the gift of friendship.)

I was wearing a pink challis scarf, and Marie said, "You've had that scarf a long time."

"You're right," I told her. "Maybe ten years. Fifteen maybe."

"No," she insisted. "Longer."

When I left, late afternoon, I kissed her goodbye and told her that I loved her. That our friendship had been one of the best things in my life. When I left, she was wearing the pink challis scarf draped over her shoulders.

That night she was put under palliative sedation. No visitors, other than her husband, her kids, and her sister.

That night, when I got home, I noticed the picture taken at my mother's 65th birthday party, in 1984. I was wearing the scarf. Damned if I hadn't had the scarf for at least 30 years. Damned if Marie wasn't right.

On the day Marie died, I spoke with another friend from high school.

Kim had been into see Marie on that Saturday, too. An hour or so after I left. She told me that Marie had asked Kim if she (Kim) thought she (Marie) would be well enough to go with me to Ireland to bring some of Jim's ashes there.

What do you make of a friend who, on her death bed, is worried about whether she's going to be able to help take care of you?

I was most fortunate to call Marie a friend. Most fortunate for her to call me one, too. 

I miss her. I always will.

When I'm watching the Home Opener this afternoon, I'll be wearing the pink challis scarf, which Marie's daughter returned to me - dry-cleaned: definitely her mother's daughter - on the day of her funeral. I'll be wearing the pink challis scart, and I'll be thinking of Marie.