12 Long Days

Twelve days ago, I got news a dear friend has a brain tumor.  She’s a very private woman and doesn’t want anyone to know, but this is how I cope.  I write.  So let’s call her Mary.  When the first call came it was simply thought Mary had had a stroke.  When the doctor found the tumor we hoped it wasn’t what we thought.  A little over a year ago another dear friend of mine was taken into emergency surgery for a tumor in her brain.  Hers was large, but benign.  Mary’s is not.

Mary has a primary type 4 malignancy in her brain.  It has spidered out across healthy tissue and is in essence untreatable.  I am, and will be, at a loss for elegant words.  Mary has been my dearest friend more years than I care to count.  She has been there through all my triumphs and all my tragedies and through it all she held my hand and helped me to survive.

I waited as patiently as I could to be able to talk to Mary.  I needed to hear her voice and say all those things I’d neglected these last years.  I needed my friend to know whatever she needed from me, I would be there.  But when I spoke to her she was different.  She doesn’t want to see me and was very matter of fact about it.  I was crushed.  I cried for myself and for Mary.

And now I finally understand.  All the women who wrote to me looking for help because their husbands were different after they came home from war, I now understand.  See, I met my husband after he was changed by what he saw in Iraq so I couldn’t fathom wanting for a different person than I had.  I’ve only ever known this man.  But I want the old Mary back.  It’s not fair that she has to be different.  Isn’t enough that she’s going to die no matter what they do?  I want the woman who was my friend, my confidant, the person I could go to no matter what I’d done or said and she would still love me.

Part of Mary died when cancer took away part of her brain.  Part of my husband died when he was in Iraq, but I never knew that part.  As grief stricken that I am for Mary, I now feel luckier than most can imagine in regards to my husband.  And now, I understand.