This post is very different from my usual writing on travel, food or wine. Those are decisions we make. This is about a path none of us would select but must travel anyway. It is a personal journey and I share mine as it walks a parallel path to that of a dear friend. I post it today in memory of Charleen Mary Baker on what would have been her 62^nd birthday.

Today I was Barbara Kitchens again. That’s the name they know me by in the old neighborhood and the best one to jog a memory. Especially after a lot of years and while wearing a mask. It was good to catch up with high school friends. We were not the cool kids, the pretty ones, the jocks or the party crowd. But we hung together, here in the church social hall, much as we did forty plus years ago in the high school cafeteria. The talk was a little different, who’s retired, who has grandchildren, who has all their original joints. But the reason we were all there speaks to the strength of the ties.

We grew up together in that neighborhood. Rolling Greens it was called, Adele and I, Charleen and Becky; Cinnaminson High School Classes of 75 and 78. and Our moms were Brownie troop leaders together, we car pooled, hung out at each other’s houses, baked cookies at holidays, took care of each other’s plants and pets. Becky and Charleen were musical- high school marching band, chorus, all that. Adele and I drove them. Adele and I each have three children, two girls and a boy. The younger two for each of us, a set of twins. We’ve staying in touch, even as we all moved around the country for college and career.

We shared each other’s health challenges. Adele and Charleen’s parents were true angels when my mom was struggling with cancer and my dad with shingles. Neither mom nor dad could drive for a bit so the Bakers stepped in to help. When Charlene was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, we followed along on the journey. Becky would forward the emails Charlene sent and Adele kept in touch by text and Facebook. There were visits, trips to Longwood Gardens and lunches at favorite Jersey diners.

Charleen’s five-year battle with ovarian cancer ended in November. She wanted the memorial service to wait until the spring. Charleen Baker was for many years a research horticulturist who loved the flowers on which she spent much of her career. She returned to Cinnaminson to care for her mother until her death four years ago and taught at area colleges as her health permitted. She was the “greeting card person” at her church- sending birthday and anniversary cards to the congregation throughout the year. She knew she would not be here to do it this year, so she wrote them in advance. The folks at St. Stephens are still receiving cards in her handwriting.

We celebrated Charleen today- the warm, loving, funny, brilliant woman that she was. And those of us from the class of 75 were there for too, for Adele. But the one thing in my heart all day, in the car on the drive over, at the church, standing on the hill by the graveside in the snow squalls and biting wind (it may be spring but wow it was cold, thanks Charleen) was the empty spot beside me. Becky would have been there. With this date planned long in advance she would not have missed it for anything, except for the reason she did. Becky was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer and died a few short months later. It is hard to lose your parents. But to bury a sibling, to lose the only one? It is just awful. Terrible, bad, lonely, awful. To be the only one left. Do you remember that time where? Where was this picture taken? Guess who I ran into? Wait til I tell you about… So many questions there is no one left to answer, no one left to share a memory. So many times I have wanted to pick up the phone or send a picture or ask a question. But there is no one to answer.

What a horrible thief cancer is. Is it worse to suffer the long march trough years of treatments? Or is decline in super-fast forward a harder fate? For many there are cures, or treatments that grant long years of remission. If there is life, with science conquering new horizons daily, there is hope. But it is a weary battle once the winner is clear, for everyone, even those non-combatants left behind to clear up the battlefield and mourn the losses.

The last thing Charleen said to me when I visited in her last weeks was, “I miss Becky”. None of us could have imagined that she would not be there to cheer along her dear friend one last time, or to celebrate her life this cold snowy afternoon.  Charlene, I miss her desperately, but today, you do not. I truly believe as Becky and Charleen did that death on earth is not the end of the journey.

Forgive the whining. I know that Becky’s husband and son bear a far greater daily loss. I am deeply blessed and grateful for my husband, my children, my stepmother; to be surrounded by love is a great gift. But grief takes its own time and its own forms. It is not a competition and there are no standards, no – you only get to hurt up to 8, he gets to go to 10. And no timeline, nope, you only get x months, time to be done. Each of us walks our own personal journey, you don’t get to set the GPS or the speedometer for the route or the timing. Throughout Becky’s illness, her death and in the aftermath, I dealt with the logistics. I cried only once that I remember, on one thing I wished I could have fixed regarding her care. Someone had to deal with the decisions, figure out the health insurance, the arrangements, the paperwork, clean out the closet. Certainly, that all needed to be done and it kept my mind occupied and away from really feeling the loss. But eventually you are faced with a day when that loss becomes real, when the pain is not kept at bay by to do lists. I knew it would come, that something would trigger it, and I even thought for a while that I could push it along. Ok, now would be a good time to get this over with, surely this event, this anniversary, this sappy Hallmark movie (Becky LOVED those) will do it. I have tissues ready. But that’s just not how it works.

I share my personal journey because someone out there is feeling the same; now or has in the past or will in the future. It just sucks. You know it will get better; that it’s a process that you just have to get through. They say you have to pass through this scab ripping off, total emptying out stage for it to heal.  I now know that you have no control over when or how it will happen.

But I can tell you what helps, what begins to fill the hollow places grief leaves as its storm passes. Love. Love of family, friends, the faith that God didn’t and doesn’t leave you alone to weather whatever storm envelops you. I am blessed in my family of blood and marriage as well as by circles built of friendship and faith. Love, such an inadequate word in the English language, for the thing that makes all the difference.