death

As soon as my brother-in-law learned that my mother's health was declining, Don responded by putting her on his Saturday morning "call list." Every weekend, Don places calls to a growing list of friends and relatives who are housebound, lonely, and/or ill. His uplifting phone calls aren't obligatory. He calls because he cares and is genuinely interested in listening to people and helping them solve or better cope with their problems.

 

Some people live very lonely lives. Last week a 78-year-old retired New York City schoolteacher, named Jane Wild, who lived in a white Cape Cod in my own hamlet (Chappaqua, New York) was found dead in her second-floor bathroom. The local newspaper reported that Wild was a recluse with few friends and no family except for a sister who lived with her, until she died in 1985. Since then, Jane was only known to have received occasional visits from a male friend, who died last summer. What made the story all the more remarkable was that Jane Wild had been dead for at least six months before anyone even noticed---this, despite the fact that her utilities had been turned off and mail had accumulated to the point where her mailbox was so stuffed that the mailman stopped delivering. No neighbors had thought to check on her.

 

Like hand-penned letters, the number of phone calls being made is decreasing relative to other types of electronic communications. There was a time---before email and faxes---when many workers had long "call lists" on their desks with the names of colleagues they planned to contact the next morning. Now people are more likely to text, IM, tweet, or use email, depending on their age and personal preference. The contact may take place while they are walking down a city street, or riding in a car or train. People tend to multi-task rather than listen to the person at the other end of the phone with full attention.

 

Phone calls, even perfunctory ones, may have already become altogether passé. My twenty-something son, like a growing number of Americans doesn't own a landline. He recently told me that he rarely initiates cell phone calls (yes, he still gets them from me!) except when there's a problem with his bank account or cable TV.

 

Yet a simple phone call with a warm voice at the other hand can change a person's day. I'm amazed at how Don's phone calls can perk up my mom's spirits, albeit for a short time. It makes you wonder if each of us should have a Saturday morning "call list" to express our affection for the people we truly care about.

The connection between two friends is often indescribable. It just feels right whenever you are together. When I met Rita, I was an eleven-year-old awkward adolescent.  She was a poised, charming and strikingly attractive kindergarten teacher who chose me as the fifth-grade “monitor” to make sure that all the kids in her class stood in a straight line when they walked down the hall and cleaned up their wooden desktops after finger-painting. She first became my mentor and role model and later became a friend.

Over time, we forged a unique, intergenerational friendship that made the years between us disappear. As a second act in her career, Dr. Rita Dunn became an inspiring, internationally renowned professor of higher education; prolific author of more than three hundred articles, book chapters, monographs, and research papers; and authority (and missionary) on using individual learning styles to improve teaching. During that second career, the working wife and mother mentored more than 160 doctoral students, many of whom now occupy positions of leadership in their own right.

By any measure, she was an extraordinary woman with whom I was fortunate to have had an exceptional relationship. Although we weren’t in constant contact over the years, we stayed connected through periodic notes to each other and emails, punctuated by occasional visits. More than that, we just “clicked.” I understood her and she “got” me. As she passionately blazed her way through the various phases of womanhood, I depended on her for advice (which she was never short of) and wisdom to ease the bumps for me. We celebrated our remarkable friendship with a champagne toast when I took her to lunch for her 80th birthday last May.

I visited her at her home this Wednesday in a torrential downpour. I wanted to be with her. Only three weeks earlier, she had had trouble breathing and was hospitalized after arriving at the ER. After tests of every organ and body system, she was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive type of metastatic cancer. “It doesn’t look good,” she told me.

Soon after being discharged, she was admitted to another hospital in Manhattan where she was treated for ascites (an uncomfortable buildup of fluid in the abdomen) and then released for further outpatient treatment closer to home.  Earlier last week an oncologist told Rita and her family that treatment might only extend her life by several weeks. She declined and bravely braced herself for the days that followed.

When I arrived, Rita was sitting upright in a lounge chair caressed with stacks of pillows on each side of her but she still winced from pain. Her body was swollen with fluid and her skin was stretched to the breaking point from her waist to her toes. We held hands and she told me that she had led a blessed life for seven decades (happily married to her husband for more than half of them), had a wonderful extended family, a legion of friends, and had achieved all her dreams.  I left to pick up some medicines for her and when I returned Rita was napping peacefully. I tiptoed out, planning to return this weekend.

Ironically, as I was thinking about what I might blog about on the occasion of Friendship Day, the phone rang with a call telling me that Rita had passed away at 5AM yesterday. In 1935, the US Congress proclaimed the first Sunday in August each year as Friendship Day. Unlike Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or Christmas, holidays that have become highly commercialized, there are no expectations of gifts, cards, flowers, or for this holiday. Most people probably haven’t heard of it, so if you choose you can act as if it is just another Sunday. On the other hand, you can decide to set aside time to celebrate the friendships that enrich your life.

With the hectic pace of our lives, it’s too easy to take friendships, even very good ones, for granted. Use Friendship Day as an excuse to rethink and realign your friendship priorities. It’s easy to get sucked into spending your time with a needy friend who constantly seeks out your companionship but consistently drains your energy, or with a toxic friend who is filled with ambivalence but conveniently lives next door. Consciously choose the friends you want to spend time with and nurture the relationships that matter most.

Rita Dunn was the most influential woman in my life, hands down, yet the time we spent together over the years feels far too brief. Balancing life, work, family and friendships often makes me feel like I’m on a high wire. It’s far easier to keep moving forward without making choices. I feel like I was on autopilot and almost imperceptibly lost control of my priorities, spending the bulk of my time with people and things that were less important to me. Losing Rita reminds me that I owe it to myself and those who matter most to spend my precious moments wisely.

Last night’s second season premiere of Lipstick Jungle on NBC, called Pandora’s Box, offers women a teachable friendship moment. We learn that Nico (Kim Raver) is plagued with guilt over her affair with her young stud, Kirby, and is desperate to save her marriage.

 

She tells her husband Charles (Christopher Cousins) about her indiscretion with her young stud, Kirby, only to later find out that Charles was having a long-term affair with one of his students, Megan, who has become pregnant. Within 24 hours, Charles dies unexpectedly in a hospital recovery room after double-bypass surgery. Nico is left shaken, with a mélange of conflicted feelings, and has to hastily arrange his funeral.

 

THE MOMENT:
Clearly distraught, Nico is surrounded and supported by her best friends, Wendy (Brooke Shields) and Victory (Lindsay Price) and one of them asks her:  “Is there anyone here from your family?” Even though there was no one, we know that Nico will be okay because she her friends are beside her. 

Everyone isn’t fortunate enough to have the types of family ties or family members they wish they had. But we are able to make and choose our friends.

Perhaps no event is as life-changing as the death of a spouse. After my friend and colleague journalist Mickey Goodman of Marietta, Georgia lost her husband Phil, she never realized that the loss would have such an enormous impact on her female friendships. It simply threw many of them into a tailspin.

Mickey graciously shared her reflections which are abstracted from a longer essay and printed below:

There are books, pamphlets and web sites devoted to practical matters that must be dealt with following the death of a spouse: advice on attorneys, wills, insurance policies, retirement, social security, bank accounts, ad nauseum. There is no advice on dealing with people who crush your spirit.

When a friend from my teaching days who had also lost her husband approached me after my husband's funeral, I expected a life preserver. Instead, she threw me an anchor. You have to join my group, she said. We call ourselves the Merry Widows.

Who knew that once close couple-friends would suddenly stop calling or that another would advise me not to continue in the couple’s book club because I would be more ‘comfortable’ among women? I never dreamed that the husband of an acquaintance would sidle up to me, wink and say, “If you ever get lonesome all alone at night, just call me on my cell phone, any time.”

In contrast, so many friends soared with the angels. The neighborhood dinner club brought mountains of food, (wo)manned the house while we were at the funeral and cleaned up afterward and left enough meals in the freezer to last for weeks. My next-door neighbor still calls frequently to check on me. Phil’s buddies have initiated me into the Monday lunch bunch.

Though I'll never become truly accustomed to the single life, I'm thankful for many wonderful new friends and a closer relationship with others. My children were (and are) my sustenance, my seven young grandchildren, dessert. And my life marches on to a different beat.

To read more of Mickey’s work, go to: www.mickeygoodman.com