I have this memory that sticks in my head. It’s one of those that haunts me and makes me sad, but also somehow at the same time makes me happy. It’s of Rebecca – who used to live next door to us for a few years with her husband and young kids. She was literally one of the nicest and most outgoing people you could ever meet. She was always smiling and friendly and was one of those rare people who never seemed to have an agenda, but instead just wanted to know you and be a part of the world. One day, out of the blue, she stopped my wife outside and told her that she just found out she had stage 4 breast cancer. She was only in her early 30’s. She had an infant baby and was nursing and didn’t notice anything different until it had already gotten to stage 4. We were, of course, all devastated. How could this happen to someone so young – why always the really good people? The questions were swirling around in our heads.
A few weeks later Rebecca and her family were having company for the weekend – which leads me to that memory:
It was a beautiful spring Saturday on the weekend of the Greek Festival. We had spent the early part of the day going to one of my daughter’s volleyball games and I was now out in the yard doing yard work. Rebecca came out with one of her guests – it might have been her sister – and they were doing something only Rebecca would do in our neighborhood of uptight suburbanites. They were sitting in the front yard on a large blanket talking and laughing and enjoying the nice weather. She waved me over and introduced me to her guest and asked what we had planned for the weekend. I told her how we were going to the Greek Festival that night. She didn’t know anything about it, so I explained all about the food and the wine and the music all under this huge tent – and how we meet up with old friends and just spend the evening enjoying the spring – and the wine. She laughed and said how much fun that sounded and that they’d have to check it out sometime. She was so happy and full of life – like nothing was going on…
I thought about that moment a lot the next few years while she got worse, when they moved to be closer to family while her treatments got more intense, and when we found out she had died. It’s now going on four years since she passed and life just keeps rolling on while she just stays the same – sitting on that blanket in the front yard. This memory and these thoughts remind me of a scene in me and my wife’s favorite movie – Before Sunrise – where Celine takes Jesse to this graveyard in Vienna that she had gone to as a child…
Anyway, this past weekend was the Greek Festival and on Saturday we went to my daughter’s volleyball games earlier in the day and while outside doing yard work I realized that the weather felt just as it did years ago – and I looked over next door to the front yard and thought about Rebecca and life and time and my daughter growing up and how fast everything goes by. And then I went inside to get ready to go meet our friends…
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