Remembering Ellie

It was about this time last year. E had gone into the hospital for stomach surgery. A bowel obstruction. A few months later we stood by her grave, hurting as her three-year-old yelled the impossible questions above our sniffles, “Why they putting my Momma down there? Is Momma in there?”

The days I spent with her in the hospital are not hazy. Not really the blur you expect one year later. Crystal clear instead. Her nearly unrecognizable face, swollen with fluid, her untamed eyebrows and grey hair roots signaling the time since she’d been “free.”
As her husband interviewed nannies with urgency, I walked the hospital halls with a potential candidate’s toddler, purporting to keep her company as she kept mine.

By the time we let E go, it was a relief. Stomach surgery such as hers can be routine. But nothing for E was routine. Born with a congenital illness, my childhood friend lived a life I dare not imagine.

On the first day of third grade, E, a gap-toothed eight-year-old welcomed me with a huge smile and a thermos of mysterious enzyme drink. An empty desk pushed opposite hers seemed to be waiting for me. At eight, E wore her illness on her sleeve, but it was like a small pocket there, sometimes overflowing, but often unnoticed, blending into the fabric of the bright eyed, old-souled child she was. It was one of the first things we discussed, on par with Judy Blume and first crushes.

By the time we were nine another classmate “S” announced to the lunchroom that her mother was a nurse who said E would die as a teenager. I ran after E as she went crashing through the bathroom doors and into a stall to cry. She stunned me by explaining the horrible prediction was likely a fact. But we were kids and went on to fumble our way together through puberty with interludes during which she spent several weeks each year in the hospital “recharging.”

Decades later, when I visited E in her Riverdale apartment, looking so cool in her cute jeans and long hair, refereeing toy tug-of-war between our two babies, I felt like we were sticking it to “S” and her nurse mother. I was mesmerized and befuddled by her each time we spoke, enjoyed sushi, or compared novels. I enjoyed being her “chariot ride” away from the NYC hospital that cared for her each time she needed treatments. A social worker by trade, the master’s degree she earned was only a mark of distinction for those who did not know her. She was a born listener, always able to offer firm guidance with a snarky humor. E would have made an unrealistic character in a novel, a girl who faced death at every turn but knew she deserved the education, the guy, the house, the kids and even the cats. One would have to suspend disbelief to imagine her world.

For the last years of her life, E lived states away. The day before she moved, I hijacked her for a makeover at Bloomingdales and wondered as I dropped her off at home whether I would see her again. It was always like that, each time we parted, I wondered. Over the years, we bridged the gaps created by children, jobs, and ultimately the distance of her move midwest with the wonder of instant messaging. Late night chats were heady, a blend of parenting woes and work stress punctuated by frustration about the increasing challenges to her health.

Today I find myself looking at the SUV on my right or the dinner table to my left wondering – what loss have they sustained? And marveling that here we are, the living, inexplicably going about our daily activities, hopefully making the most of them as best as we know how. It’s so cliché to talk about what we’ve learned from those we’ve lost. E could have waited for the death she knew would come before she’d lived a full life. Instead she defined living as what we do when we make the most of every day we have.

Just before she went into the hospital for the last time, E saw the movie Up with her boys. She cried a little too much, a little too long. But this is the sentiment she shared with her friends later that week. “Thanks for the adventure. Now go have one of your own.”