Tribute to Julie

Julie died today. I knew it was coming. Guess what? That didn't help much. It still slammed me hard.

When I saw her last month she seemed okay. Her brain was functioning with its usual incredible speed. From her chair in the living room, she was ruling over her two teenagers. She talked to her son about his grades and grounded her daughter for not calling when her babysitting job went overtime. She was still in charge. Her cousin had come from Australia to help out. Julie had banished all cooking to the driveway since odors made her nauseous. When her cousin accidentally started preparing something on the stove, Julie lit up her electronic cigarette, waited for smoke to whirl around in the chamber and then took a puff, holding it in her mouth, sucking it in deeply and then exhaled into a toilet paper tube filled with a dryer sheet. She said it was the only thing that helped her curb nausea when she was suddenly faced with an unpleasant odor.

She wanted to know what the latest gossip was at work. I was not the right person to ask. I was a disappointment to her in that area. I couldn't tell her anything she didn't already know. In fact, she knew more than I and embellished what little I could offer up. She still had her hair then, her ankles and belly weren't swollen. She looked young, her skin was the wrinkle-free, milky-white it had always been, and she seemed rested. I told her she looked beautiful. She told me, "Great. I'll be a beautiful corpse."

I asked what the latest news was from her doctors. She said two to four weeks. Looking at her that afternoon, sitting, chatting, bantering, it seemed unbelievable to me. I thought the doctors must have been talking about someone else. They couldn't have been talking about this person sitting next to me, this avid SC fan, outspoken coworker, this woman who at times had been a thorn in my side and a pain in my butt. This woman couldn't be dying in two to four weeks.

The last time I saw Julie was at school a couple of days before my birthday. This was now exactly two weeks after the afternoon at her house. She had lost her hair, she was using a walker, her feet and belly were swollen and she looked frail and bilious. She was cleaning out her classroom with some family members. Her cousin is going into teaching and Julie was giving her the best of her teaching materials. I invited her to my party. She was, after all, one of the women who has somehow made an impact on my life. We had known each other for twenty-two years, we had been through a lot together, and we had truly grown to love and respect each other.

On Saturday Julie took a turn for the worse. By that time she was diapered, on oxygen, vomiting strange liquids and in a constant morphine-induced sleep. Katherine went and sat with her for two hours. And for two hours Katherine sobbed. Katherine will take the role of surrogate mother now. Katherine will help Julie's daughter shop for bras and prom dresses. Katherine will try to do what she can. She is an extremely good woman and will do her best to fulfill this obligation to Julie.

Today I found out the change that had occurred over the weekend with Julie. And when I could, I prayed that God would take my friend out of her pain and deliver her from this earth. My prayer was answered.