I saw my best friend alive for the last time 1 month ago yesterday. By 10:00 the next morning, she was gone, and our lives would be turned upside down even more so than they had been just 15 days before when we’d lost another close friend, Vicky, to metastatic breast cancer. Our friend group was decimated in the span of 2 weeks, and we are now left with the broken remnants of what once was, left to figure out where we go from here.
This friend group is incredibly tight. It’s large and varied and almost incestuous, by which I mean there’s a ton of overlap. Cheryl and I have been friends since we were 5 years old. I met her husband Dave before she did, on my 21st birthday through our friends Tina (whom I’ve known since birth) and her husband Scott (whom I met when he and Tina started dating at 16). Dave and I were already very good friends when he met and started dating Cheryl. Tina, Scott, and Dave all went to college together. They also went to college with Ed, who is Vicky’s husband. I met Ed and Vicky more than 20 years ago. Billy and Heather, who are married, also went to school with that group. Over the years, I’ve integrated that whole group with my other friend groups because I love surrounding myself with a giant ball of friendship and it all just flowed so naturally. So when we lost both Cheryl and Vicky within 2 weeks of each other, it hit basically everyone I know hard.
Vicky had been in remission from breast cancer for a number of years. Earlier this year after having some pain in her back, she learned that the cancer had metastasized to her bones and liver. While we were devastated at the news, we were hopeful that with treatment, she’d beat it once again. Meanwhile, Cheryl had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer 2 years ago and had done well with treatment. Until she didn’t.
By summer, both Vicky and Cheryl were struggling. Vicky had tried a couple of different treatments, but her health was clearly in decline. As for Cheryl, after being unable to keep food down and ending up in the hospital for a week, we found out that her cancer had spread and was crushing her small intestine. Because she couldn’t digest food, they decided to put her on TPN (total parenteral nutrition), which would provide her the nutrients needed to live through 12-hour daily infusions.
Being unable to eat was a blow to Cheryl. For as tiny as she was, that girl loved to eat. I’m not talking about salads either; she was a meat and potatoes girl through and through. And I won’t say she liked her steak still mooing, but pretty damn close. Plus, a lot of our socializing revolved around eating. We went out weekly to our favorite restaurant for dinner. She’d come over at least once a week, and often more, for tea, and she’d frequently pick up Panera on the way or I’d have some fresh banana bread ready for her. During football season, a large group of us would gather here or at her house or at our friend Deb’s to watch the game and there would always be a significant spread of food and booze.
So this summer was different than we thought it would be. We’d made a lot of plans earlier in the year for the summer: there were concerts to attend and trips to take. Those things never came to fruition. Instead, we spent a quieter summer together making the most of the limited time we now feared we had. The cruelest fate is having to pass time while waiting for someone to die. Such was our fate this summer.
In mid-September, both Cheryl and Vicky ended up in the hospital. On September 14th, my friend Jen drove me in to Boston to visit them. They were both at Brigham and Women’s hospital, two floors apart. I went in to see Cheryl first, then upstairs to see Vicky. Vicky’s cancer had spread further, and she was going to be put on hospice. She might have 6 months, they told us. Cheryl’s cancer had also mercilessly spread, and she too would be coming home on hospice. Our little world was crashing down around us.
My visit with Cheryl that day was powerful. Though we’d always talked to each other about anything and everything and we’d certainly been there for each through all of life’s highs and lows, that day we touched on the one subject we had avoided for years. While being best friends who both had serious medical diagnoses gave us a unique perspective on life at a relatively young age, we never actually talked about death and dying. But it did offer us a certain introspection that we could share, and over those couple of hours sitting next to her in her hospital bed, we finally broke down and went where neither of us wanted to go. Our tears flowed freely as we both came to some acceptance that time was running out. We talked about our fears and beliefs. We talked about services and who we’d want there (and who we wouldn’t want there). We talked about Dave and her kids. Between the tears, there was plenty of laughter as we recalled memories from our childhood. Those precious memories, 46 years of them, that now both fill my heart and break it.
That day in the hospital, Cheryl asked me if I would give her eulogy. I promised her I would, though I honestly doubted I’d actually be able to go through with it. But I figured I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.
I kept in touch with Cheryl and Dave and Vicky and Ed by text and phone for the next week. On Wednesday, September 20th, Cheryl called me from the hospital and told me that Vicky had passed away that morning. We knew things were bad, but none of us expected this. Not this soon. Cheryl and I cried together over the phone. I so desperately wish I could’ve been there with her. All of us cried together over the next few days as we prepared to say our final goodbye to Vicky.
Cheryl was discharged from the hospital that weekend. I don’t think they could’ve kept her in there any longer, because she was absolutely determined to go to Vicky’s services. So on Tuesday, the 26th, we met at Chapman funeral home for Vicky’s wake. The wake was scheduled for 4:00, but they were having a viewing for family and close friends an hour before. We all went in together and made our way to the casket and then over to Ed and their daughter Shayleigh. Cheryl and I then sat in our wheelchairs next to each other right in front of the casket for the next 4 hours. Neither of us said much. We just held hands and became lost in our own thoughts.
The next morning, we gathered once again at the funeral home for the service and then headed to the cemetery. Because it was on a steep hill, I waited in the van during the graveside service because I was afraid I’d get stuck in the grass, and I certainly didn’t want to be driving my 300+ pound wheelchair over people’s graves. When the service was over, we headed to the Fireside restaurant for the repast. Once again, Cheryl and I sat side by side, holding hands, not saying much. She was incredibly weak. The last couple of days had taken their toll and because the intestinal blockages had become worse, she was constantly getting sick and couldn’t really even hold down water. They’d taken her off the TPN when she was discharged, so she’d been without any source of nutrition for several days by then. I knew in my heart that I’d be doing this whole thing again shortly for my best friend.
For months, Cheryl had been helping me plan our Rise Against ALS fundraiser that was scheduled for September 30, just 3 days after we buried Vicky. Despite how sick she was that summer, she wanted to help in any way she could just like she had since our first event 4 years earlier. She had always been there for me in any and every way since I was diagnosed, and this year was no different. And more importantly, she planned on being there that night. Having seen how weak she was at Vicky’s services, there was no way I thought she’d be able to make it on the 30th. I should’ve known better than to doubt her. She was the fiercest, most determined badass I’ve ever known. Of course she was going to be there. And so she was.
The week leading up to the fundraiser had been agonizing for all of us. Everyone was exhausted. I myself got through the week thanks to copious amounts of Xanax and wine. And, of course, we all knew that we were on the cusp of losing Cheryl. But that night we all made one more push. I was at the hall early and I saw Dave come in pushing Cheryl in her wheelchair. He parked her at the first table, the one I’d designated for myself, Dave, Cheryl, our other best friend, Alana, and Billy and Eddie. Eddie, who had just 10 days before lost his beautiful Vicky. We were hanging onto each other with everything we had.
In all honesty, I don’t remember much about that night. I spent a lot of it sitting at the table with Cheryl and Alana and greeting people without having any idea what I was saying. I held Cheryl’s hand. I hugged Eddie and Dave every time they came over to us. Alana, Cheryl, and I talked. We helped her when she got sick. We held her hand some more. At some point, Cheryl started shivering. I took the blue and white ALS One blanket that was across my lap and gave it to Dave to put around her. She continued to shiver, but as she sank into the blanket she seemed to relax.
Cheryl’s cousin Mike was graciously deejaying the event that night for the first 3 hours and then we had the band playing the last hour. By 9:00, Cheryl was too weak and exhausted to stay any longer. As people came over to say their goodbyes, I held on to her hand and just sobbed. I had tried so hard to keep it together, but sitting there with her, I knew we were going to lose her soon and I just couldn’t control the grief I felt. We had a couple of minutes alone before Dave took her home. She held on to my hand and told me not to cry. She told me she loved me, and I told her I loved her. She said she’d talk to me tomorrow and I relaxed a little because I knew I would.
Cheryl and I texted several times the next day. By now she was a full week with no nutrition and her body was starting to break down quickly. Dave texted me a picture of her resting on the couch that morning. She had my ALS One blanket covering her, and I smiled at the image.
Later that night we had to call rescue when my mother fell ill at the house. She ended up being admitted to the hospital and I was trying to keep my head from spinning from the insanity of it all. I had been scheduled to go into the hospital on Monday for a pre-op appointment for my feeding tube but ended up canceling because my mother was still in the hospital, and I didn’t want to be too far away between her and Cheryl. My mother ended up being released on Tuesday, and I spoke to Cheryl only briefly on Monday and not at all on Tuesday.
By Tuesday evening I was starting to feel very agitated. I had spoken to Dave throughout the day, and he had told me that Cheryl was incredibly weak and barely speaking. He asked me if I could come over the next day to see her.
Jack drove me over to their house on Wednesday, October 4. Cheryl’s sister Jeanette was getting ready to leave as I came in. We hugged and I went over and sat next to Cheryl on the couch. I thought I was prepared to see her. I was not.
I spent a couple of hours with Cheryl and Dave that day. Cheryl could barely speak, but she was still very much aware. In a voice barely above a whisper, she asked how much we raised at the event, and I told her we’d raised more than we ever had, close to $17,000. She smiled and nodded and then closed her eyes. A few minutes later she opened them again and told me she loved me. They were the last words I’d ever hear her say.
I spent a lot of time talking with Dave about what was happening and what to expect and what he could and should do. Cheryl had started with the death rattle. Just going from my experience with my Dad, I didn’t think she had more than a day or 2. They were having a hospital bed being delivered that evening. She’d been on the couch for several days. Our time together that day was in the same living room that our friend group has watched every Patriots Super Bowl in. Fifteen feet from the kitchen where we all took shots each time the Pats scored. Ten feet from the dining room where we’d spent countless hours playing board games, poker, and coloring Easter eggs with our kids. Twenty feet from the deck where we’d had dozens of cookouts and birthday parties. That house had always been so full of life. And now she was lying on the couch drowning in her own secretions.
How had we all steered so close to Fortune’s rudder at precisely the same time? It hardly felt random. What the hell sins did we commit in a past life?
I got a text from Dave at 8:30 Thursday morning saying Cheryl had had a bad night. He asked if I could come over later that morning. My getting out of bed and getting ready for the day is not a quick process, so I started it as soon as I hung up so I could get over there. I was just finishing getting dressed when the phone rang at 10:23. Dave’s name flashed across the screen, and I knew. My voice cracked as I answered, and he said the words I knew were coming but still managed to knock the breath from my lungs. She was gone.
When I got to their house about a half an hour later, Dave, their daughter Olvia, and Cheryl’s niece Melissa were all sitting on the couch that had been moved aside to make room for the hospital bed just the night before. They all looked stricken and as I looked to my left, to where they were all staring, I saw Cheryl. The room was quiet. She was at peace, her suffering over. Ours was just beginning. I made my way over to the bed and leaned in over my friend to tell her one final time how much I loved her. I kissed her forehead and stroked her hair and held her hand.
I stayed at the house for several hours, alternately hugging Dave and crying with him and talking about services and logistics and anything else that needed to be talked about. At one point, he picked up the ALS One blanket lying on the foot of her bed and he said that I may not be getting it back. No problem, I assured him. Through tears he told me that Cheryl wanted to be buried with it and asked if that was OK. I didn’t think my heart could break any more than it had already. Of course it’s OK, I told him. Nothing would make me happier than to have a piece of me with her. Eddie came in then and the three of us just sobbed.
Over the next several days, Eddie and I spent a lot of time over at the house with Dave. We went through boxes of pictures for the slide show that the funeral home was going to set up, and with each picture we recalled the story attached to it. There were a lot of tears during those days, but there was also a hell of a lot of laughs. We wrote the obituary and made the arrangements and steeled ourselves to say another long goodbye.
On Tuesday, October 10th, we made our way to Chapman funeral home once again. It was the worst kind of déjà vu. Cheryl’s wake was open casket, and once again I sat just feet away for 4 hours, in almost the same spot I had sat with her just a couple of weeks before. In a room full of people, I never felt more alone.
The next day, we gathered again for her celebration of life. Cheryl had asked me just 3 weeks before if I would write and deliver her eulogy. I had started to write it that night. But I had shuddered at the thought of it then. She was still alive, still fighting. How could I write the words that I’d then have to deliver with her lying a couple of feet behind me in an ornamental casket? I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But I also couldn’t shake the enormity of the ask. It kept me up at night and so I made sure to have my phone within reach because I knew that bits and pieces of what I needed to say would come to me in the small hours of the night as the word slept around me. And so they did. I had the beginning and the end of it written the first week. The rest I wrote late into the night on the day of her wake. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get up in front of a roomful of people and deliver the words that tore my heart apart as I wrote them. I’m not a fan of public speaking on my best day, let alone my worst. But when the priest called me up to deliver the words I had prepared, Cheryl kicked me in the ass, and I suddenly found myself at the front of the room with the funeral director lowering the microphone to my chair level.
Forty-six years ago, a car pulled into the driveway of the house 2 down from mine on Partridge Hill Road in Braintree. When my little 5-year-old self went to investigate I peered into the back seat and saw Cheryl grinning over at me. Her legs too short to reach the floorboard, she was swinging them wildly against the bench seat in the back of her parents’ car. I have no idea what words were exchanged between us that day, but whatever they were, they formed the basis of a friendship whose roots took hold and blossomed into one of the most significant relationships of my life.
We were typical kids of our generation: out of the house as soon as our spoons hit our empty cereal bowls on weekend mornings, not to be seen again until the streetlights came on in the evening. And we embraced every second of that time outdoors with our friends. There were kickball games and games of tag, climbing trees, swimming in each other’s pools, and sleepovers at each other’s houses nearly every weekend.
As we grew older and left childhood in the past, our activities changed but our friendship only grew stronger. I followed Cheryl from Braintree to Raynham nearly 20 years ago, and here we’ve lived the second half of our lives. We’ve been by each other’s sides through the joys and tragedies and mundanities of life. We’ve raised our kids here and navigated adulting with humor, sarcasm, and the occasional glass or five of wine.
There have been trips to the zoo with our kids, getting together to color Easter eggs, Halloween parties, Christmas parties, pool parties. Lots of parties. Patriots games, concerts, trips to Disney. But one of my favorite things to do with Cheryl was to have a simple cup of tea. When I was expecting my son, Jack, I wanted to paint a big jungle mural on his nursery wall. Cheryl, who was expecting Joshua at the time, was incredibly artistic and so I asked if she could help me. She started coming over to my house several times a week and we’d paint for a while and then we’d head into the kitchen and have a cup of tea and just talk. It was the start of our weekly get-togethers for tea, and it was something we cherished until just a couple of short months ago.
Everyone needs a best friend in life. Someone who walks into your life, and you know that no matter what, they will never walk out. Someone you can be yourself with, open up to, laugh with, cry with, someone who protects you, someone you protect. And sometimes you’re lucky enough to meet that person when you’re a child and you get to walk through your entire journey with them. I was blessed with two and Cheryl was one of them.
Having a friend from childhood is like having a roadmap through life. You’re never going to get lost with that person by your side. You also can’t get away with anything because they know you better than you know yourself and they will absolutely call you on everything.
Cheryl was a fiercely loyal friend. She was passionate about everything she did, and nothing more so than being a mom to Jeffrey, Joshua, and Olivia. She loved that role more than any other.
Though our sorrow runs deep in Cheryl’s absence, her passing can serve as one of the greatest teachable moments of our lives. Her death reminds us in the harshest of ways both of the fragility and fleeting nature of this life we’re given. It should embolden us to take hold with both hands, to live well, to live deeply, and to appreciate each and every moment. And it should remind us, above all, to love.
In the coming days, weeks, months, and years, we will keep Cheryl’s memory alive through the telling of stories and sharing of memories. Memory is such a strange companion. Within its insistent grip, we live concomitantly in the energy and hope of the present and the deep, sometimes untapped emotional places of the past. The interwoven dichotomies—this joy out of sorrow and smiles out of tears—we hope will one day lead to healing and peace as we think of Cheryl and the beauty and light that she brought to all of our lives.
Author Richard Russo wrote that “Lives are like rivers: Eventually they go where they must. Not where we want them to.” I’m not sure that offers us any solace. I know each one of us in this room would have wanted to divert the path that led us here. If only the strength of our love could have made it so. But here we sit, and through our tears and sorrow we will be pillars for each other as Cheryl was for us. And no matter what tomorrow brings, we will embrace tenacity, compassion, and selflessness, just the way she always did.
Rest gently, Chez. You are so deeply loved and missed.
—
When the service ended, we made our way to the cemetery and then back to the Fireside for another repast. With the exception of the families, there were essentially the same people in attendance that had been there for Vicky. All these wonderful people, people I loved deeply, still reeling from the first loss, now enduring a second. It was unfathomable.
After the repast, my friend Ashley and I went to get a drink with some friends. From there, we went back to the cemetery. Thinking back on it, that probably wasn’t the best idea. Going back that day unleashed a flood of grief and sadness and anger that I’d kept dammed up for years. Seeing that Cheryl’s casket was now underground, the sod neatly replaced on top, the flowers surrounding the area where just a few short hours ago we had gathered to say our final goodbyes…it was too much. The wall was punctured, and I wailed, struggling to catch my breath between such deep sobs. I retched and vomited. There was nothing left to hold onto. The ground beneath me gave way and I crumbled completely.
I went home that night, and I feel like nothing has been the same since. The world around me echoes with the absence of Cheryl and of Vicky and of my father and so many others. I’m afraid of everything and of nothing at all. I feel like a stranger in a strange land, forced now to navigate this unfamiliar life, this new normal of ours. If I manage to sleep, I wake up every morning just waiting for the weight of the day ahead to descend, to crash, down on me. Things can go quickly from zero to Oh shit when you’re in a bad head space and I am trying desperately not to let it consume me.
The day after Cheryl’s funeral, I received a frantic call from my cousin telling me that my aunt, whom I’d just seen 2 days before at Cheryl’s wake, had suffered a stroke. It was at that moment that I threw my hands up in surrender. Everything everywhere all at once. I can’t take any more loss.
Over the last several weeks, my emotions have swung wildly from sorrow to anger and everything in between. I have tried to regain some sense of normalcy. But there are many days when it’s just easier to stay in bed and not deal with anything. I promised Cheryl that we’d all take care of each other and that all of us would take care of Dave and the kids and Eddie and Shae. She wanted us to continue our traditions, continue living and being there for each other.
Last Sunday I had everyone over for the Pat’s game. And on Tuesday, Dave, Olivia, and Eddie came over for Halloween. We sat in the driveway by the firepit and handed out candy before taking Olivia around to collect her lot, and then headed down the street to our friends Billy and Sharon’s house to top off the night. It’s what we’ve always done and yet it all felt so completely foreign.
I’ve been consumed by thoughts of death lately. The recent deaths of Vicky and Cheryl, the impending 2-year anniversary of my father’s death, my own slow demise from ALS. I’m curious about death and the power it has to change life so entirely. The dead slip out gently and leave behind such utter wreckage in their wake, such furious and frenzied holes in the lives of those left behind. Fortune catches us unprepared, no matter how much warning we may have, again and again. We lament that life is so incomprehensibly short, and then, goddammit, she proves it to us.
The hardest part of the aftermath is cleaning up the scattered bits amidst the unrelenting thud of your own heartbeat thumping loudly in your skull in the most silent of moments. What do you need as a tangible reminder? What is too much? Some say the memories are all that matter but I find comfort in having a physical reminder.
I’m tired of grieving. I feel like I was just crawling out of it when I was thrust headlong back into it as we waited for cancer to take Vicky’s last breath and then Cheryl’s.
And the truth is, there are plenty of people to commiserate with. People who loved Vicky and Cheryl and who are grieving deeply. I’m part of that community, of course, but I also feel very much apart from it. It’s a loneliness I can’t fully explain. I feel it most when I’m sitting in my wheelchair among our group of friends, drinking wine through a straw or watching as someone cuts up my food or ties my shoe. Or when I’m lying in bed with the BiPap on listening to the cadence of my breathing, staring unblinking at the ceiling above.
The last couple of years have been imbued with tragedy. It hasn’t been a sudden thing so much as a series of small quakes, building up almost imperceptibly and then suddenly upon us, this heavy shroud that brings us to our knees.
There’s a moment between the time when a thing happens and when we find out that it’s happened that offers us a glimmer of grace. The moment just before our worlds come crashing down. The seconds before the phone call. The moment before the words come spilling out that will cut us to our core. I would like to live in that exact moment forever.
Rise Against ALS! 