So, I've lost my friend. She has left. Left the building, left the parking lot, left the earth. To me, she feels lost, gone, nowhere I can see or hear. She took a year to take her leave of us, simply because she refused to go, even when there were spirits pulling and pushing her through the door. The fact is, she didn't want to go. In the end, the spirits won. We still feel, left here without her, that we lost.
I feel there is a must behind my writing today, because that's what some of us do when we've got shit to deal with. We write it down, look at it, hold it close and ruminate over it or put it where others can read it and go, oh, yeah, I get that.
My Ellie was an angel, in many ways, on the earth. She was a truly good person who only wanted others to be good. She saw the good first and anything else as a rip in someone's fabric, a hurt they weren't good at healing rather than a failing. At the same time, she had a very tiny stinger, the size of a grain of sand, but, boy, was it sharp when she needed it to be. She didn't use it to cause harm, though. She uncovered it when she could see you needed help doing the right thing. Was it a little passive aggressive? Maybe. Would she have said so, if it was? Yep, she'd be the first.
Ellie kicked breast cancer to the ground twice, but only the first time did it stay down. The second time, she called me days after her re-diagnosis. As her friend who is also a cancer survivor, I was one of her closest repositories of all woes cancerful. She knew I wouldn't tell her how to feel about it. I was there to feel her feelings about it with her. So when we had our first lunch after her first few days of tests, she told me this story, an Ellie-in-action if ever there was one:
Her doctor sent her to the lab for blood work. When she got there, the receptionist was rude and dismissive, treating her unkindly. Worse, the phlebotomist was the same way. She jabbed Ellie's arm, and, assuming she could read between the lines as to what the tests were for, and assuming anyone with a heart would be kind to anyone being tested for cancer, or any disease, she couldn't seem to care less about Ellie's feelings and seemed resentful that she had a patient of any sort. Ellie left, her feelings hurt and already suffering mightily under the imminent terror of a cancer diagnosis.
Later in the day, when those results had been read, the doc sent her back for more lab work. This time, Ellie wisely took John, her husband, with her. Again, the receptionist and the phlebotomist acted as if she were a thorn in their sides for even showing up. Never mind that she was in there twice in one day, which anyone would know was probably not good. Didn't matter, they were rude and unkind as ever. On their way out the door, Ellie asked John, "so...did I imagine that..? Or were they...?" And he said "No. They were awful. You didn't imagine it."
Ellie turned this over in her mind the rest of the day, as she waited for the final cruel diagnosis that would dictate the quality of the remainder of her days. It kept her up that night as much as did the anticipation of the dire news. In the morning, she felt a need to address it, as a way to put it away, because, heavens, she had bigger things to deal with, but she couldn't let go of the feeling that those two lab employees had been so truly inappropriate that it suggested some kind of demon they were fighting. So, what did Ellie do?
A little middle finger, a lot of love. Can you guess? She sent them flowers. On a day when she was receiving the worst news of her life, she couldn't dismiss the pain of others. So she sent them flowers with a note that said she was so sorry for the pain they must have in their lives that would lead them to treat someone at their mercy with such a lack of it. She hoped that they would have a little more light in their lives and happier days from now on.
THAT was my Ellie. She figured anyone who behaved badly was in pain. She was a doctor, a healer (who, by the way, could have reported these women to their superiors with some authority), and she felt that need to heal so deeply that not a day went by when she didn't exercise it. She hated that these women were in so much pain that they would treat a sick person badly. But she had that little stinger too. Clearly, these people just needed a reminder.
She was usually right about these things.
I feel her nearby as I write this story. And that is what we will all do for a while, until she gets fully settled up there, and can start spending her time floating among us and injecting our hearts with her love. We will write about her and talk about her, and keep her here with us until we can stand not being able to see her face or hear her voice because we know for sure that she is always with us and not really gone. We will do this because we miss her so much. We've missed her for the last year, while she was busy kicking cancer's butt, hacking at it with all her swords, until she had no swords left. Cancer took her from us while we imagined that Ellie was a physical body. But all who knew and loved her love her still and know that she wasn't her body. She was love and light and everything that was good. So, when we are ready, she will make her presence known. And because she was SO darn stubborn ("I can do my own laundry two hours after chemo, I don't need any help"), she will make sure we know it's her in case we still happen to think that she's gone.
I miss you, my beautiful Ellie. You will live, truly, in my heart, forever.
