Elizabeth Burton Redding, one of my best friends in college, died on Sunday night, from metastatic breast cancer. I was out of town and off the grid, so I only learned of this tonight. My family is sound asleep; I am sitting here on the couch, alone, overcome by grief and regret.
Elizabeth and I had lost touch over the years, but recently had reconnected via that much-maligned medium, Facebook. As soon as she found me, she called and we talked for hours. It was as if no time had passed at all. We were shocked to learn that we had both just finished treatment for breast cancer. The difference was that hers had, as she put it, "partied right on through to my lungs." In my ignorance (and I really should have known better), I didn't understand, immediately, that that meant Elizabeth was Stage IV. It just wasn't possible.
But it was.
I saw her, for the first time in a decade, in Chicago in March. We drank too much wine at dinner and talked non-stop about our families, our jobs and, of course, that big elephant in the room, our breast cancer. By that point she also had bone mets and had begun weekly chemo in a clinical trial, which seemed to be working. She told me that her doctors had given her a range of five to seven years to live. We talked about what that felt like, especially with her youngest son still measuring his years in the single digits, her only daughter still very much needing a mother and her older boys just beginning adulthood. I cried, but she did not. She just knew she'd be the one to defy the odds. But she also knew that she might not, and she was heartbroken at the thought of leaving her children. I have awoken in a panic many a night to face those same fears--I don't fear dying; I fear leaving my snowflake. But I have never had to face those fears as acutely as Betsy did.
To my mind, that Betsy should die so young, and in so much pain, can only be the work of a callous god. But here's the thing--Elizabeth would disagree with that completely. Through her battle, she held on to her family and her faith. If anything, it brought her closer to them. No one could possibly die feeling more loved than Elizabeth did. If there's any silver lining here at all, it's knowing how much, and by how many, she was loved.
I will forever regret that, relying on the false sense of security of those promised "five-to-seven-years," I did not rush to Chicago in her last days. I knew things were bad, but it really never occurred to me that there wasn't--and now will never be--more time. I hope Elizabeth will forgive me. Actually, I don't hope that, because I know she already has. I just hope her family will forgive me, too.
So that's what happened at the end. But it doesn't come close to explaining who Elizabeth was, what made her laugh, what flavor of ice cream she liked best, or what sort of weather made her happy. It doesn't reveal the sharp glimmer of intelligence and the deep kindness in her eyes. It doesn't tell you that she was an almost therapist-like listener, ready to advise but never to lecture. It doesn't communicate how she made you want to be a better person.
I've known her as a history nerd, a frazzled working mother, and, in her latest incarnation, some sort of high-tech something or other that I really didn't understand. I've known her to do some things she wasn't proud of, as we all do. But unlike most of us, she acknowledged them, apologized and knew that tomorrow would be a better and sunnier day.
It doesn't seem right that I could be at the butterfly house, at the zoo, or on the Great Wheel of Seattle these past few days without knowing that Betsy was gone. I thought about her a lot this week, actually. But I have done so ever since her family started an update page on Facebook, so I can't claim any sort of ESP. Should I have felt something--some frisson of insight--on Sunday night when she breathed her last?
No.
Because you know what?
Betsy lives.
Réquiem ætérnam dona ei. Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat ei. Requiéscat in pace. Amen.
