Wide and forever

There are days when Auntie C squats squarely in front of me blocking the horizon.
Days filled with wills and power of attorney paperwork, with assigning an alternative decision maker in the event that I reach turnip status and can't make my own decisions. There are consent forms, prescriptions to fill, classes to attend, doctor’s appointments, x-rays, PET scans, blood tests and coming up, chemotherapy. Ah, Auntie, you do fill up a room.

But today the sky is blue and the leaves are slowly waltzing from green to red and gold. There is whipped cream melting in my coffee, left over from a “team Linda” meeting yesterday. And there are letters from two of my best male friends – friends I thought were gone…lost to the pace of life, distance and the relentless changes life brings…

My women friends are the bedrock of my life. I can count on them when my life goes south, when celebration is due, when bodies need to be buried and they support me when I make decisions that scare the crap out of them. When the decisions turn out to be disasters, they never say, “I told you so.” I try to do the same for them. It’s the way women are.

My men friends? I don’t even need the fingers of one hand to count my close male friends. And they matter to me in a different way. There is always a special kind of chemistry between men and women who are friends. I speak a different language with these two men who have wandered back into my life – and in thinking I’d lost them, a part of my soul went painfully mute.

But they’re guys. In spite of their writing talent, they pretty much stink at maintaining correspondence – which is a guy thing. But here we are…my world flips over onto its head, everything I know falls out of my pockets and free-falls and they are here, reminding me of my own story as well as theirs. One with a rant that makes me giggle out loud. One with the story about the calling of being a father. I laugh and weep through the letters. I can’t wait to reply.

And the sun feels so much warmer. It feels like there is a future – something that goes shining on, big and wide and limitless. No matter what happens in this little stage play, love goes on and on.