Every friend group has that one person. The mother figure. Their position in the crew is the watcher, the wrangler, the protector and comforter.
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They have friendships of the kind you read about in books: When you are in a room with them, you sink into familiar conversation and private jokes and gossip so old it can barely be called gossip anymore. They remember the stories you’ve forgotten, because their job is to safeguard the legacy of the group.
Though you might not see them frequently, a chance meeting on the street begins with “I only have five minutes” and stretches to 60. Or you only chat through text but nothing is lost because you understand each other’s shorthand. That’s what half a lifetime in each other’s sphere will do.
She will answer any distress call at any time of day, yet take no crap when the call tips over into self-pity. She offers emotional, financial and gastronomical aid. You think you are her best friend, that she goes out of her way only for you, but she is quietly doing it a dozen times over. She keeps the secrets.
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On an overcast Friday last summer, my friend mom was told she had inoperable cancer. “I was given three to four months, at best a year, but said with a wince and a shrug,” she told her friends on social media.
One more summer seemed impossible.
The friend mom needed mothering. Her community rallied to give her that — meals and rides, fundraising and cheerleading.
When her chemo went awry, she called herself a snowflake. I accompanied her to the oncology ward and sat uncomfortably while the healing poison dripped into her. “If you write about this —” she said, and I said: “It’s not my story. It’s your story.”
And she didn’t respond, because her story belongs to everyone. Because it is being told around the world from dozens of perspectives.
This will be our last Mother’s Day with our friend mom. We ease toward summer and wonder whether she’ll be with us — and with her son and husband — for some of those days.
And I realize that I do, after all, believe in miracles. It’s not the miracle that our friend-group mom has been with us an extra few months. It’s that she exists at all and brought her miraculous self into our lives.
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