Julie and Farewells

When I woke up this morning, my first thought was that today is Julie’s birthday. An easy one to remember since it’s the Fourth of July. The least I can do is to remember her before the fireworks begin.

I wrote this blog in 2019. Julie died in March of 2020, barely a day before Covid took over our world. Today her memorial service was finally held, more than two years after her death. The intimate presentations by her husband and friends, punctuated by selections of Julie’s beautiful writing, was powerful. As I sat on Zoom, watching it all, I sobbed and intermittently looked into my backyard, watching birds fluttering around, listening to their calls as the mating season has arrived. How I miss my wonderful friend who loved watching the chickadees visit the bird feeder on her back deck. Rich chose a selection from a note I wrote her, which appears highlighted below, in his eulogy. I feel the same way today as I did back then. Goodbye, dearest Julie.

I have a beloved friend named Julie. I’ve been lucky enough to have kept her in my life for about 50 years. We met in college. We were part of the revolutionary days of the late ‘60’s and early 70’s. We were anti-war, pro-women’s and civil rights and profoundly anti-establishment and anti-patriarchy. Julie was a warrior-poet. Erudite, well-read, sardonic and bitingly funny, she was my kind of person. She had the courage to head a slate of candidates who were running for office as an alternative student government at our university, with Julie as the chair. Everyone won but her. A more moderate male was elected to the spot which should rightfully have been hers. Hard times for women back then, despite some progress. Still hard times. I knew Julie before she married her husband Rich as she knew me before I married Michael. Today that seems almost as if we were friends in prehistoric times.

She was a few years older than me. I can’t find a couple of excellent photos of her from back in those days but I include a few blurry ones. She was very spirited and beautiful, along with all her intellectual firepower. Julie was a “townie,” born in the community where we both attended college. When she got involved with Rich who was a graduate student, she got a job and stayed in town while he was finishing his degree. They had a daughter who is few years older than mine.

When many of our friends made the post-graduation exodus to Chicago, we still had each other and I felt lucky that our two daughters, a few years apart in age, played in the same houses together. Eventually, Rich got a job at a college in Kentucky and they packed up and moved away. We wrote, frequently at first, and then less so. But it didn’t really matter. When we got together, we had one of those easy relationships that picked up where it left off, without any difficult transitions.

Eventually, they moved to Ames, Iowa where they still reside. They came back here frequently to Julie’s hometown for visits, her hometown where I still reside. Eventually her dad died which was a big deal because he was a department head at the University. I remember going to the memorial service for him which was crowded and blurry because of all the attendees. But I was there. As years went by, Julie’s mom ultimately needed living assistance and Julie moved her to Ames. Visits home decreased. Still we managed to stay in touch.

About 19 years ago, breast cancer showed up in Julie’s life at a pretty early age. It was one of the particularly nasty types, the Her-2 positive version which necessitated that she was blasted with treatment. She clawed her way through all of that and came out on the other side, for which all who loved her were deeply grateful. But about three years ago, cancer reappeared in her liver, the same breast cancer as the earlier one, with a slightly different mutation. How incredible that a cancer can lie dormant for almost seventeen years and then re-emerge in a new place and be so life-threatening. By that time, Michael had succumbed to his cancer and I was a free agent. Cancer can be such an isolating experience. I’d vowed to myself that I would make myself available to loved ones and friends who were going through treatments and hard times.

So I took off for Ames in fall of 2017 to spend some time with my old friends and give them support and empathy in their difficult situation. We had a wonderful visit and although we were uncertain about how effective the treatments would be, I hoped that I’d see Julie again. And that’s exactly what happened. She outlived her prognosis and actually did well enough to make a visit back here last year.

Other dear friends from Chicago joined us and we all were thrilled and hopeful that she would be one of those who’d beat the odds. She had such a good time that she talked about the possibility of moving back here and reestablishing a life in the town of her childhood. We continued to communicate and all seemed well. But suddenly things took a dark turn – the liver cancer metastasized and spread to her colon. An exploratory surgery unearthed too many bad spots splayed out everywhere and the only treatment  alternative was a “light” chemo, as if anything that toxic could actually be termed light. Her response was dreadful with her immune system getting hammered and making her vulnerable to virtually any opportunistic germ. Slowly she recovered from that.

During the US Open that year, she and Rich and I spoke before my personal favorite, Roger Federer’s, match on a Tuesday evening. We were all pretty lighthearted. But the next day, Julie began experiencing dreadful abdominal pain and was hospitalized. After scans and other tests, the doctors concluded that she had an intestinal obstruction which in the case of someone with her disease, was considered a death sentence. On September 7th, Rich sent out a note to family and friends saying that Julie had days to weeks to live and was being transferred to a hospice facility. He told people that if we wanted to plan a goodbye we were welcome to do that and transmitted a message from Julie expressing her gratitude for all the love she’d felt from those of us who’d been part of her life.

I sat stunned in my living room, not knowing what I should do. My knee replacement surgery was still pretty recent and an hours’ long car ride with my leg bent seemed like a terrible idea. So I decided to send Rich a note with the request that he read it to Julie who was being treated for pain while being fed through nasogastric tubing. I wrote this on September 7th, the same day I got this dreadful news.

My dearest Julie,

I have lain beside you in beds and on couches since we were so very young, when we were vulnerable and pained, and when we were angry and valiant, and  so “in your face,” to the assholes of the world. So I lay beside you now, in some ethereal form which should be wordless in reality, but is not in the case of you and me. I remember.

Hours of talking and sorting and handholding. Speaking of love and sadness and mysteries of this difficult world. Gales of laughter through the worst of times. The gifts of our language which we acquired on the journey of this life ring loudly in my head. Julie the poet. I could listen to you for hours and you listened to me, a master of graffiti, as we found the right word that would resonate for whatever was the urgency of the moment.

I have not left you and you will not leave me. Whatever are the crevices that our bodies hold for those who come along and somehow wriggle into the fabric of our person is the place I am in you and the place you are in me. Even when we are converted to ash or dust, that space for each other was settled long ago.

I wish you release from every type of pain. You’ve suffered better life’s challenges because your will came from a place of love. For as long as I am a corporeal being I will lift your banner and try to ease the pain of your dearest family. I treasure what we’ve been able to share in recent years, an affirmation of what is unbreakable and forever. I love you, Julie, for now and always. Thank you for being a gift in my life.

Renee