A friend of mine has stage 4 cancer. She’s the same age as me.
Today I sent her some good news. I thought it might cheer her up. She sent back her congratulations, and then told me she wouldn’t be opening my messages for a while. She needs everything she has for her recovery. She’ll come and see me when she’s better. “If not,” she wrote, “good bye for now.”
I was devastated and honestly quite angry. That message took me all day to process. What should have been a lovely day doing arts and crafts with another set of friends in the countryside turned into a day where I was mulling over whether I had done something wrong and feeling horribly guilty for it.
No bullshit
My best memories of my friend are not especially grand. Sewing costumes together late at night. A walk in the countryside, and a good lunch at the end of it. And of her trying to do kinesiology on my very nervous and aggressive rescue cat to find out why he was so badly behaved around people, even though she’s horribly allergic to cats and had water streaming out of her eyes and snot pouring out of her nose.
She has a wicked sense of humour. She’s rude, and she loves a rude joke. And she doesn’t take bullshit. Not for long, anyway. If someone treats her badly, she cuts them off and moves on. I’ve always admired that.
So the door she closed on me isn’t exactly a new version of her. It’s the same decisive lady, with something really, really, really big going on. She’s got her hands full dealing with her illness. It’s not about shutting me out.
I understand that. I still hate it.
The help I’m not allowed to give
Over the years I’ve helped her many times when she was stuck with work. She took that help gladly. This time, I’m not allowed, and I know it’s not about our friendship.
I’ll admit I feel embarrassed, as if I’d got it wrong by sharing good news at all. But there’s no way of knowing how someone wants you to act, or help, or not help. It might change from one day to the next. Everyone is different.
And once you’ve told someone you don’t have the capacity for their help or concern, well, that’s really serious, isn’t it? I’m scared.
Either way
She has said publicly that she’s OK either way, whether she lives or dies.
That’s the part that is hardest to accept, because I’d really like to see her and spend time with her while she’s alive. Maybe that’s a bit selfish. I know it’s human.
But then I remembered what her last year was like: flippin’ awful. She told me 2025 was tougher than what she’s dealing with now. I believe her.
My own grandmother lived to 101 and she wasn’t ready. Near the very end, in a hospice, she said, “Get me out of here.” I think I’d come to believe that’s how you’re supposed to go. Fighting until the very end.
My friend actually sat with her grandmother through dying. She didn’t just hear what was going on from the other side of the world like I did. Maybe she learned something different. Maybe “either way” is exhaustion. Maybe it’s peace. Maybe it’s both. From the outside, I can’t tell.
And she still wrote “once I am better”. That isn’t nothing. I will hold on to that.
Her life, her choice
I’m angry at her situation, and then I’m annoyed with myself for being angry, because it’s her life. She gets to choose how to face whatever comes.
So I’m trying to practise two kinds of acceptance. Accepting her choices, even the one that keeps me out. And slowly, accepting that she is mortal. That we all are, me included. I’m not ready to die either, and watching her from afar has made me more aware of my own time.
What was underneath
The thought that I might never see her alive again.
That absolutely blows, because it’s so great having a funny and kind of rude friend!
Keeping the door open
I know she knows I love her and appreciate her. I told her. I also told her I wouldn’t write again.
So I’ll wait, quietly in the wings. No news. No questions. Nothing she has to respond to. Nothing she has to explain.
And if she does walk back through the door one day, well, that will just be brilliant!
I will simply be glad to be able to say to her, “Dude!!! You made it!!!”
