Here’s a tip — if someone has cancer but hasn’t died, don’t post a picture of them on Instagram with the caption forever inspiring, forever loved, forever in my thoughts.
It makes people think that person is dead.
This was my reality this weekend. A picture of my friend popped up on my feed, complete with that caption. It gave a different flavour to my 39th birthday.
I knew this particular friend was battling cancer for the third time. I knew it was aggressive. So I had no reason to not believe it had seen my friend to the end.
It was a surprise therefore when my husband and I got a text from our friend the day after.
I was sitting on the couch, fuggy-headed from a night of birthday celebrations with winemakers who know how to party, wondering if the wine hadn’t quite worked through my system yet. Was this real?
We didn’t know what to do. So my husband asked him:
— How are you doing?
— Surviving and that’s the best I can hope for right now.
Surviving. So not dead then.
Something happens when you think an old friend — one you’ve not spoken to in a while — has died but hasn’t.
You get a second chance to rekindle a friendship you never even knew you missed.
He was the one that got away.
The longer I live, the more I accumulate friendships like these. You’ll know them, I’m sure. People you were once inseparable with but for no good reason fell by the wayside.
Rob was one of those. For many years we were besties. He was a colleague of my husband’s and once we met, we became friends in that deep way that rarely happens. We got each other. Both stuck in jobs we hated, we’d email each other 10–15 times a day just to keep each other sane, and meet for drinks 2–3 times a week.
This was a friendship I presumed would last the ages.