For years, I’ve tried to keep it a secret. I try not to let on that I can cry at the drop of a hat over something as simple as a bird getting hit by a car or a hysterical child who lost her mother in the grocery. But I think my compassion gene got zapped with a little extra sappiness in the creation factory. I feel like a porcelain doll. I’ve learned to be careful about what I feed by brain. I don’t watch the evening news—too much doom and gloom. (People that know me well find this hysterical, coming from a Journalism major.) I don’t do massacre movies or television murder dramas. I’m usually the one looking for the silver lining. For this reason, one of my best friends calls me Polly. As in Pollyanna. She thinks I’m saccharin-sweet all the time. I haven’t told her this is a survival mechanism.
But I temporarily lost track of Polly this week. You see, my dear friend Amy passed away. My heart is still breaking. She was the mother of three beautiful daughters. She was patient, loving, forgiving. Salt-of-the-earth.
Growing up, I knew I was supposed to be a stay-at-home Mom. So when I finally got pregnant, I was over the moon. Then our circumstances changed suddenly and leaving my fulltime job was not an option. Just the idea of leaving that tiny, newborn baby in a daycare or with a stranger kept me up all night crying. That’s when my friend Amy said she would watch my baby boy. And she did. For years. She nurtured, cared for, fed and protected him as if he were her own. He spent years growing up along-side her three girls. She and her husband said he was like the boy they never had.
Time marched on. One day in 2001, over lunch, Amy mentioned she’d been to the doctor for tests. I called her the following Saturday to check up on her. It was breast cancer. We both cried. For 8 ½ years she fought. We’d get together every few months for lunch and catch up. There were other challenges in her life: her husband lost his job, her parents were aging, two of the girls were heading to college. The cancer was spreading, but she was living her life. It wasn’t stopping her. She gave up worrying but never—for one minute—gave up hope. Just a few weeks ago, I emailed Amy to see if I could treat her to lunch. She apologized, but said she just wasn’t up to it. That’s the moment when I lost track of Polly.
I can’t stop thinking about how those girls are going to get by without their mom. Who are they going to call when they get engaged? Pregnant? But then I think of Amy’s quiet strength—how she loved without requiring anything in return. I think about how she set an example as a devoted mother, wife and friend that many of us spend a lifetime trying to figure out. That’s a legacy that will live on through her girls to the next generation. And on. And on.
I was also thinking about Elizabeth Edwards who died today after her own lengthy fight with cancer. I was thinking about all that she endured. I read that just a few months after she lost her son Wade in a car accident at age 16, she had a meltdown in the grocery store—triggered by a cherry Coke display … Wade’s favorite soft drink. I thought about how I would’ve done the same thing. Hers, too, was a legacy built on a foundation of dignity and quiet strength.
I don’t know what God’s plan is. I wish I did. But this is what I do know: These women make me so proud to have been born a woman. We put others first every day. We care, love, nurture, encourage, listen, smile and share your laughter and tears. We carry the bills, the responsibility, the groceries, the blame and the pain. We carry your burdens. We carry your joys. We carry you. We are like tender fruit. We bruise easier. We cry more often and we turn sad young. But we love with all our hearts and souls.
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