Growing Corn

I had an interesting conversation with my physical therapist this morning. We started off talking about writing then morphed into blogging. She told me how she wrote a blog through her diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. I told her about this blog and how I talked about losing my Mom here.

Our conversation flowed, as conversations do between like-minded folks, and at one point, we talked about losing friends during the hard times we each experienced, how some people who were once close pulled away while others came closer.

My p.t. lost a friend the day she was diagnosed. She asked the friend to stay with her that evening because she was upset and needed someone to talk to. The friend said she was too busy.

I had a friend who pulled away from me during the last month of my Mom's life. During the active time of our relationship, this friend turned to me again and again for comfort during her difficult times. She's not much of a planner of social events and quite timid in a crowd of mostly strangers. I'm a planner of social stuff. Most of the time, I glide easily through crowds. I planned. She showed up. I glided. She followed in the safety of my wake.

While I was aware of these differences between us, I did not realize how much she relied on the attention in our relationship to flow from me to her.

At the beginning of August last year, my focus in life narrowed to exclude everything and nearly everyone except an eighty-two year old woman with white hair lying on her side in a bed in a nursing home on Cape Cod. I could no longer plan more than five minutes ahead, and had to concentrate just to get through my days.

It was at this time that I made plans to spend a Saturday kayaking with this friend who I now think of as a Onceler (from Dr. Seuss's book The Lorax). Within the hour of making that plan, however, I realized I could not bear to be away from home for a full day. By that time, I lived with a half-packed suitcase and jumped whenever the phone rang. Mom's needs were my first priority.

I explained this to my Onceler Friend, changing my plans. Her immediate response was to pick up her toys and stomp away. Over the next week, the quality of our interactions deteriorated rapidly, and with no energy to spare, I had to hope she would recognize my distress and realize this time I needed the attention.

That did not happen.

During the last days I sat with Mom in her dimmed room, watching her breathe, alert to any sign of suffering that I could alleviate, I had a great deal of time to think. I knew my life was changing in that room and I needed to see it and understand it.

I remembered a phrase from the Medicine Cards I use for meditation about embracing what grows corn and eliminating what does not. Because the pain of my Onceler Friend's actions was so fresh, she became part of my thinking.

And I realized I no longer wanted to include her in my life. And I felt relieved.

It's been seven months now and I don't think of her often. But every once in a while, something like my conversation with my physical therapist triggers thoughts of my Onceler Friend, and I feel the need to have my say, to tell her of the impact her actions had on me at a time when I was so fragile. To tell her how angry I've been, and why she is no longer my friend.

Growing corn is important.