Friends
There were few better ways to start a day than with news that a friend had the all clear from the cancer that had threatened to take her out. This was that day and the woman was delighted. Cancer had been a theme of her life for a decade now and she was well aware of just how devastating it could be. Her own beloved wife had feared cancer forever and when it came, it was as horrific as she had always feared.
The diagnosis had been shocking, even though they had been looking for what seemed forever and her death 9 months later was still reverberating through the woman's life. It was an incredible life and as she sat tapping away on a Tuesday morning all those years after her wife had left for the stardust trail, she could feel the deep relief that her friend was ok.
Her friend was a lovely woman. One of many lovely women in her life but this particular friend was especially lovely. She was kind and smart and funny, like so many of the people in her life. What was remarkable was that, unlike most people who at some point or another can be a bit aggravating to their loved ones, this woman wasn't. Perhaps her girlfriend would offer an alternative but the woman didn't think so. No, this friend was just incredibly affable, deeply compassionate and very, very funny. She didn't have the edginess of some of her cool city friends and this made her all the more appealing.
The two women had always gotten along, understanding as they did that sometimes, they would get over excited by life and need an actual lie down after their escapades. They would laugh easily and share a concern too about the state of the world. They put it down to the mercurial nature of their gemini star signs and took great pleasure in the changeable nature of their moods.
The difference was that one of them was essentially a very grounded human who had the resilience to ride life's storms and the other struggled a bit and sometimes got overly tangled in her head. She too would ride life's storms but usually with a bit more noise and drama because that was her way and the two had a friendship that spanned two decades. She loved her friend very much and had been devastated to hear of her diagnosis so the news of the all clear was the best she could have had.
She thought of all the friends she had in her life. Truly, this was her greatest gift and she was grateful every day for the interesting, loving people that she knew. Today too, she'd had a message from a man who had once been a firefighter in the city and who now lived at the other end of the country, surfing the waves and living a happier way. He too was a smart man with a big heart looking for ways to keep connected and she hoped that they would meet up again. It had been almost ten years since they had seen one another but thanks to the power of the internet, they had maintained a friendship that she still valued.
It was the upside of the dark side she thought. We all know too much about things we don't understand and there is definitely a threat to our synapses being constantly flicked but the upside surely was the capacity for connection. The pandemic had shown that and although she was deeply suspicious of what was being manipulated for nefarious means, she was determined not to be intimidated by it.
Artificial intelligence was a peculiar notion for sure but she felt that there must be a way for it to be used for good and this was perhaps where friendships came in. The original idea of friends on Facebook seemed increasingly stretched and of course no one could actually know 4000 friends but the principle had certainly helped grow her connections over the years.
She thought about all the amazing people in her life. The mothers, the fathers, the sisters, the brothers. Everyone has labels in the her lives she thought. We all have roles, routines, responsibilities. It is what keeps us connected. What she was most pleased about this morning was the strength of her connections and she hoped, as she always did, that people knew how much they meant to her and how grateful she was to have them in her life. After all, we only have one life and we only have now to live it. Hmm, bit deep for a Tuesday she thought. Yeah, and my mate doesn't have cancer and that's as deep as it gets. In her mind and in her heart, she wished her friends a hahalala day and decided to crack on. The sun was fully up and there was a whole day ahead to discover.