I haven't written here since Shera died. It's still too close. I think a bit, I start to type, and then it stops and the silence slips back in, the empty place where she was. In my heart. When you are 60, lifetime soul friend has a completely different meaning that it does when you are 20 or 30 or even 40. Different. Final. More empty, somehow.
Like the time I bought my new stove. A brand new Maytag, all the bells and whistles. It was just a few years ago and I looked at it and thought, "I will never have to buy another stove again. This one will last until I die". I won't live long enough now to worry about ever buying another stove.
I will never have the time to build another friendship the way I built this one. I will never be as hungry or as vulnerable or as idealistic or as ready to see someone new in my life in the same way I saw Shera back in 1994. Shera left this place and took with her something of me. Of course, she left something of her with me as well. Ahh, those old cliches. "Her memory lives on in me." The memory of our love and caring. But even more, the silly little funny memories of stupid moments among the red rocks in Utah. Those are the memories that she leaves with me. I can talk about them all day to others, but no one was there, they are meaningless words on paper that can't even come close to carrying the feeling, the sense of light and brilliance that surrounds the memories.
No one but Shera.
She is the only one who was there with me. I carry it alone now, with the deep luster of her memory as a shiny shadow in my heart, but just a shadow.
I carry the brilliance of Muley Twist rock and the frost on the dried seed heads of flowers at dawn, the empty space between the front of the motor home window and the depth of the canyon below the cliff outside that window. I can describe it all day and yet words can't even begin to convey what it was to anyone but me, what it felt like to be with this friend that I loved totally in such a sweet place of love and acceptance of each other. It was all the sweeter because we didn't mix it up with being lovers, or being romantic, even though I idealized her and loved her so very much, it was all from afar somehow. We knew we were friends. We knew that bond would last long beyond any of the temporary bonds she found with the women in her life.
Till Jeri, of course. She made it with Jeri, she learned how to appreciate Jerri, she stayed with her, and let Jerri be there for her in a way no one else had done. She fought it sometimes inside, she raved and ranted, she went into depressions and out, but still she stayed with Jerri till her end. Loyal. Loving. Appreciative of all that they had together and how muc Jerri had given her.
We lamented over the years, the wasted years spent looking for the perfect partner, the perfect passion, the perfect love. Of course it didn't exist, and because we somehow knew it didn't exist, we knew better than to look toward each other for that perfection. The friendship was ironically too perfect.
So this blog is about breast cancer, attended to far too late, double mastectomies, chemotherapy, brain tumors, lung tumors, losing her hair, her humor, but never her strength or determination to fight, to keep going, to keep trying. How many of us are taken by this beast. The young ones, the healthy ones. The lesbians who never had children and never nursed a child. Their breasts defeating them in the end. Breasts that are high and proud and firm because they never sagged under the weight of a child. In the end, their killers.
1 comment:
02:05 pm
2/2/06
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penitence69
copperwoman
my mother's friend Shera died yesterday. Shera was one of those women who just tackles everything she sets her sights on. she and my mom went to canyon country every year for at least the last decade (two decades??), hiking all over the canyons, sleeping in tents with the coyotes and snakes all around, working shaman magic all over under the stars. Shera was very political and lesbian and so forth for a while. and i recall my mom's antics with her like remembering the crazy uncle everyone seems to have stashed in the family tree somewhere. but later, over the last five years or so, Shera was very sick. about 1995 or so, she was diagnosed with hepatitis. i was a little cranky with mom about her being around the baby at that time. what a jerk i can be. but recently, she developed breast cancer and it never went away. that woman lived at least the last five years with breast cancer in her chest, her lungs, her liver and even her brain. she fought hard. she still ran to the desert every year with my mother and sang and danced in the dry, cactus-filled moonlight. she and mom had amazing physics or spirituality conversations about which i always heard. i half icon-ized Shera. i just can't explain how tough she was. not like in lesbian tough, but like in amazing-human-being tough.
about a week ago, i met with my mom for coffee when she was on her way thru town. i said i'd had this weird feeling death was breathing down my neck again. last time that happened and i told kevin, his uncle marshal kirk died. (marshal wrote a fabulous, critically acclaimed book about being gay in the 90's called "after the ball", btw.) my mother then told me Shera was in a hospital and was suddenly going home from there because the treatments had stopped. after talking about it, mom and i decided the staff at the hospital were pretty much giving up on Shera at that point. no one had visited her room, for instance, in 24 hours. all this was a screeching diversion from what had been the norm for Shera for the last five years. "she's gonna do more chemo, oh and by the way, she and i are going to utah canyon country and then over to the coast to parasail and then off to colorado to river raft" or whatever other crazy old lady stunts those two instigated between themselves. reminds me of the "extreme granny" in Hoodwinked.
my mother said Shera's partner, Jerri, asked Shera yesterday "do you know what's happening here?" to which Shera replied "well, i'm dying."
mom said the best moments of her life have been shared with Shera, other than her births of her children. one of the stories she told me today was of spending two hours watching the sun set in utah over the famous red rock canyons and never saying a word to each other; just sitting in the lawn chairs and taking it in. the other was of them walking the paths and picking up red rock and "smelling the colors." i never "got" my mom's fascination with the desert. HOT NOTHING, mom.
maryruth is one friend my mother has known for forty-five years and been close to, bel is close but in florida, and the only other friend mom has is Mona. mom said "one down, three to go". yikes, mother!
i knew a week ago that it was Shera's time to check out. she was getting off the boat. and i'm not really close to her, so although i'm sick to my stomach, it's more for my mother than me or Shera. oh god, and for Jerri. Jerri will be devastated without her sweetheart. mom said Jerri was there through it all, up to the end.
mom says she's been grieving in stages, and all i could say to that is "no one eats an apple whole."
mother, wherever you are now (in Florida visiting bel or already on the flight home??) i'm so sorry. i'm sorry that for all the deaths i've seen, nothing i can do or say will help you through this one. be well, Shera.
godspeed.
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