Perspective
8:38 a.m.
The Duchess, my friend since we arrived in this area 18 years ago, is six years my senior. We come from remarkably different backgrounds and have very different views on spirituality, for example, but nonetheless have much in common, right down to certain incidences in our childhoods, we are both musicians and artists, and we have children very close in age. My daughter and her son have practically grown up together. The Duchess and Duke�s wedding anniversary is the same date as ours (albeit they have been married a year longer) and for many years we celebrated as a foursome. With Vlad we were the �Three Ladies�, doing lunch a couple of times a year, exchanging Christmas gifts and performing concerts together. She was my closest confidant and I loved her as a sister. (I don�t have a sister, the closest I have to that particular sibling are my sisters-in-law whom I don�t think of as sisters but as friends--so I don�t know what it really is to love a sister. But the Duchess came pretty close.)
Last spring a wedge was put in our relationship when they (or really the Duke) forced through the hiring of the sessional instructor for the tenure-track position, a person who is not as well-qualified for the job as one of the interviewed applicants, who has caused rifts between faculty members and discomfort for some students. As the part-time faculty member on the committee pointed out, this person has already caused dissension in the department, why would you want to keep him here? But the Duke and the Duchess had befriend him and his wife (who just had a baby which we have not been invited to see) and felt that they were doing �the right thing� by making sure he got the job.
After that there was a rift between former fast friends. Hubby and I did not celebrate our anniversary with them, Vlad and I did not go out for Christmas lunch with the Duchess, I rarely saw her at music department functions (she had no students in the department this year, but teaches in education and has been working on a masters degree out of town), and I stopped phoning her. This latter was the death knell for our relationship. Even at the height of our �intimacy�, she never called me. I was always the one to pick up the phone and arranged �play dates�.
Anyway, the Duchess turned 50 four years ago. She disregarded the letter from the government advising her it was time to get a mammogram and just recently discovered a lump in her breast, which turns out to be a 3 cm tumour which has entered her lymph glands. The medical authorities are deliberating on their next step.
I finally got up the nerve to call her last night since Vlad said she was happy to talk to people. She sounds remarkably together for someone looking the Grim Reaper in the eye. In preparation for chemotherapy she has already ordered a wig, and she is fully prepared for the inevitable mastectomy, saying that she doesn�t need a breast at this stage of the game anymore. People have told her they have a �good feeling� about all this. I think that is just their way of trying to be supportive. I do not have a good feeling--I am terrified for her. She is also scared because she is never sick. She is looking at going through months of chemo and being worse from the cure than the illness itself, she who never suffers from colds even.
Anyway, in closing, I have never stopped loving the Duchess, even though I felt betrayed and wondered if she had ever really been my friend. This news has put the whole �unpleasantness� in a different perspective and made me think about what is really important in life, our friends and our relationships with them. As I wrote in another entry a very long time ago, love really is the meaning of life.
[Click back if you missed my philosophical pondering (it�s brief, don�t worry) on what makes the soul of a man.]
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