A mean part of me whispers, how close could you really have been, then? What right do you have to mourn a giant of a person? Who do you think you are, anyway?
I don’t have much of an answer for that part of myself. I usually don’t. But I’m going to try.
Once, after my stepdad’s hemorrhagic stroke, obsessed with death, I asked Bard if they would lead my funeral service. Their response was an unequivocal no. They would not be in good enough shape to lead a funeral service for me, they said. I think of that often now.
Sometimes I wonder about what it would have been like if I had been the one to get cancer and die. I’m no more able to lead a service than Bard would have been. But I wonder if they would have been a better friend to me that last year, those past few months.
It wasn’t the hemiparalysis that bothered me, though I was a bit of an unintentional daredevil wheelchair driver when I visited last May. It wasn’t the change in intelligence or capability.
It was the suffering.
I can and do beat myself up about this: it became too hard watching my friend suffer and being able to do nothing to make it better.
I’m not ready yet to really talk about glioblastoma.
I asked my 20yo what makes a friendship work, because we were in the car together and also because I value their opinion as a person. And as any Gen-Z would, they responded in their own generational language: it’s when you’re vibing.
Even though the language isn’t mine, I knew what they meant even before they went on, “It’s when you can talk about your thing and they can talk about their thing and you don’t need to know the subject to appreciate it. It’s like me and Lav.”
Continuing with the Gen-Z talk, Bard would often spill the tea to me, about themselves and about others. I knew whom they liked and whom they didn’t, and mostly why. I heard who of our mutual acquaintances was crushing on whom. There was something adolescent about it, whispering (typing) secrets at a sleepover and giggling or commiserating.
There was also something profoundly innocent about my feelings toward Bard. People are complex. Connections between people can be complicated. Communication can be fraught, even (especially?) among those closest to us. But I loved Bard simply and wholeheartedly. There just wasn’t ever much conflict between us. “No blame,” they would always say. Or once, when I checked in, “Why on wood would I be mad at you about that?”
Once I bought them a birthday card with a photo of two little girls, holding hands with faces bent toward each other. And despite Bard’s staggering intellect, despite the edgy but hilarious snark, the zaniness – the Bard I knew was one to look at you and say, “How are you?” and really want to know.
I don’t know why Bard and I vibed. I probably never will. But we did. And I’m the better for it.
As an overview, there was a visit where Vicki and Lav came and we went to the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. There was a visit when Bard was in Orlando for a conference and came up several days earlier to see us. Coincidentally, that coincided with Ellie’s birthday. There were also times when the three of them came to see us. These visits are all mostly blurred in my mind, with some exceptions.
· One visit – I think this may have been Vicki alone – Vicki had gotten stung by several bees on the foot before visiting us. The foot had been okay but then kept swelling as time went by. We ended up going to urgent care. I can’t remember what urgent care did, only that Vicki couldn’t wear a shoe on that foot and ended up layering socks. This was all right until we went out that evening, Vicki and her socks walking across various parking lots.
· That same visit Vicki really wanted a Cuban sandwich. Tampa would be a much better place for that, but I was determined to find Vicki some Cuban food in Orlando. Currently we have a Cuban diner not far from the house with great sandwiches, but at that time we had to drive a long way to find a Cuban restaurant at the edge of the Orlando area.
o There were no sandwiches, just plates of food.
o We were with my friend MK and went to karaoke afterwards.
· Karaoke – this definitely deserves its own entry.
o We went to two karaoke places at various visits and played Karaoke Revolution at home.
o I can’t hear “Love Shack” or “Material Girl” without thinking of Vicki and The Peacock Lounge. (I’m not sure if the Peacock Lounge is still in existence.)
§ I think Vicki sang the guy part on “Love Shack” while I sang the other part.
§ Everyone was dancing and clapping and singing along when Vicki sang “Material Girl”
o We went to Big Daddy’s, which was a bit of a dive but well-known for its karaoke.
§ Vicki was wearing her layered socks in the not-so-sanitary parking lot
§ My friend MK was our hype woman who was encouraging everyone to clap and yell for us.
§ We sang “Love Will Keep Us Together.” It didn’t hurt that there was a large lesbian contingent there.
o Oh, Bard. This is a Bard memory sneaking in here. We were playing Karaoke Revolution at home.
§ Bard demurred, saying they weren’t very good at karaoke. I pushed back a little, or maybe a lot. It was fun, I said. They should try, I said.
§ However bad you are thinking Bard was at karaoke, they were worse. Much, much worse.
§ Oh my dear friend, thank you for trying to appease me. You were terrible and yet you tried because I wanted you to.
· Vicki and I went to a Wine Bar in Winter Park. I had never been to a Wine Bar before.
o You put money on a card and then use the card to sample lots of different wines. (Possibly everyone on the planet knows this already.)
o We ordered a cheese flight too. Yum.
o I’m pretty sure that Dave was on kid duty during this trip. I think he and the kids may have dropped us off and then we took a taxi home.
· Vicki and I took the kids to the Magic Kingdom at Disney World.
o I was born and raised in Central Florida. I’ve been going to the Magic Kingdom since I was a small child.
o Vicki was still 100% better than me at organizing. This was before the days of Fast Passes. Vicki got us everywhere we needed or wanted to go and figured out how all the times would fit together. I was in awe of her organizational and managerial talents. (I still am.)
o I think I have memories of going to It’s a Small World and waiting in a long line at Peter Pan.
o There was stroller parking we used for both kids. When you came out of the ride, you had to look around for your strollers, just like being in a tiny parking lot.
· Another Disney story: we went to a water park while Bard, Vicki, and Lav were visiting, I think to Blizzard Beach
o Bard carefully kept and rinsed out the plastic water bottles so as not to accrue more plastic waste.
o I am pretty sure Bard had both a backpack and a fanny pack.
o My oldest, Daniel, threw a huge tantrum because he was juuuust under the size limit and couldn’t ride on the big slide. Bard and Vicki were watching Ellie while I was trying to talk Daniel down from his pint-sized fit of rage.
· As mentioned before, Bard was in Orlando for a conference and that happened to coincide with Ellie’s birthday party.
o Bard made up an invented alphabet on the spot and wrote something that said Happy Birthday, Ellie, in various glyphs and accented letters.
§ The whole thing looked very alien, and we laughed about it.
§ I might still have it someplace.
o Dave had been playing a lot of chess and wanted to play Bard. Bard demurred, saying they hadn’t played chess in a very long time.
§ Unlike with the karaoke, Bard kicked Dave’s ass at chess. They made it to endgame, but it really wasn’t close.
§ Dave was fascinated by how well Bard played. He didn’t care about losing, just enjoyed the game.
o Dave and I were in an RPG called Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies. Having a foible for your character is built into the system.
§ Dave is very deliberate in everything: speaking, writing, thinking. But he’d written an extra character that was very quick-witted and fast speaking. Dave knew that he couldn’t play his character, but he thought that Bard could.
· Bard said something to the effect of, “I think I can play this, but I’m going to need some caffeine first.” So we consensually gave Bard, a tea drinker, coffee.
· My character’s foible was that they had a crush on everyone they met.
· Bard’s character and my character started flirting rapid fire, going back and forth with crazy innuendos. Dave was trying to move the game forward into some semblance of a plot. In between, we were all dying laughing OOCly.
o Bard and I went to a place called Mead Gardens. Unfortunately, a hurricane had affected the place before I took them there, and I wasn’t aware of that.
§ We wandered around a very rickety boardwalk and luckily no one got hurt.
§ We saw lots of flora but not much fauna, although we did get very close to a great blue heron.
o I took Bard to my friend’s coffee shop and another friend’s chocolate shop. Bard complained a bit about how my second friend didn’t have standard flavors, instead having more exotic types of chocolate. This seems very off-brand for Bard, but I think they were worried about my friend’s business model.
· I went to Tampa with Bard, Vicki, and Lav to see some of their Tampa friends.
o I can’t tell you where we were as I have very little knowledge of Tampa, but there was a big lake and some connected rivers.
§ We saw a cottonmouth snake swim right toward us while on a bridge!
§ This seemed very unusual as cottonmouths are venomous but not super aggressive. Maybe it felt Bard’s dragon energy.
o We went to a Thai restaurant and to a park. (This may have been another Tampa visit, not sure.) I got Thai iced tea for the first time.
o Bard used the word grackle to indicate annoyance. “Grackle grackle grackle.” They were quite surprised to learn that we have some ubiquitous birds down here called grackles. I’m including it here because I think one of the Tampa friends actually called it out to Bard first.
· One of the things I think of as a feature of Florida are its beautiful beaches. Here in Orlando we have easy access to the coarse sand and bigger waves of the Atlantic Ocean beaches. If you want to drive slightly further, you can see the powdery sand and calmer waters of the Gulf. On either side, it’s possible to see dolphins at play and lots of various wildlife, such as crabs and jellyfish.
o Bard hated the beach, so we never went.
· The visits stopped eventually. I’m not sure why. I think probably because our kids started school and suddenly had drastically different schedules. Here we start school in mid-August, while in NY school doesn’t start until after Labor Day.
· Bard and I still chatted every day online. These weren’t always long, involved conversations. More of a ‘how are things?’ check-in.
That first visit started a flurry of them. I’m not sure who went where next. My memory is blurred. I’m going to start with the trip to New York just because there was only one, as far as I can remember.
My family of four…there’s no euphemistic way to say this…we did not have a lot of money at the time. We were a one-income family and Dave worked for the Florida Virtual School, which was still a part of the school system, so Dave wasn’t drawing a corporate salary. We elected not to take Daniel since Ellie and Lavender were closer in age and likely to want to do the same things. Dave had to work and take care of Daniel.
The adults on the visit collectively decided that each of us would take turns going out at night and leaving one person to watch the two kids (who may have been asleep by then, not sure.) In addition, I think that Vicki may have had a night with her partner (now wife) J while Bard and I watched kids.
Here are some of the highlights:
· Ellie had a strange verbal tic that Vicki called “rebooting.” Whenever they felt overwhelmed or confused about what to say next, they would say, “Hi! I’m Ellie!” It didn’t matter that the person already knew them and had been introduced. It was a go-to verbal security blanket.
· Ellie got bitten by some sort of animal at the farm/petting zoo we went to.
· Ellie and I roomed together. Both of us had dry, dry skin from the change in climate. We piled on some Aquaphor that Vicki had.
· Ellie loved the Bronx Zoo (and still does).
· Ellie and I were not sure what to do with authentic Chinese food. We liked the buns.
· Ellie says they were four when this trip occurred.
· Lavender was much more precocious than Ellie. They had a music class that I think we all went to.
· Lavender was probably reading by this time.
· Lavender had a bed full of stuffed animals (I think. I might be remembering this wrong. It seems plausible.)
· Lavender was tiny and adorable.
· I believe Vicki had soapmaking things and we made soap this visit. There were synthetic (I think?) scents that I loved. To this day, I don’t think I’ve had soap that I loved as much as I did these. Did the kids help us pour them into molds? Was this a craft strictly for the adults? I have no idea. I think there may have been glitter involved.
· On our night out, Vicki and I went to a coffee shop. It turned out that it was Open Mic night. There was a band of highschoolers playing Wonderwall. They weren’t half bad! There was an earnest folk singer (kind of terrible) and the earnest folksinger’s mother (very good.)
o At the time I thought that the mother was a lot better and I was glad to hear her.
o Now as the mother of a twenty something, I feel like, dude, stay in your lane and let your kid shine.
· Vicki and I laughed while making a joke OK Cupid profile for me based on El Condor Pasa.
o I would include examples here of what I’d rather be than what I didn’t want to be but those are all lost in the mists of time.
o Unless Vicki remembers.
· Bard made dinner for us one night and decided to make mice-shaped meatloafs. Ostensibly they were for the kids, but I think I was the one most impressed. They had little ears (made of olive halves?) and little eyes and tails.
· Bard would read books with funny accents and just talk in funny accents in general. I remember laughing so much.
· Bard pushed Ellie’s stroller when we were in the city, probably because I wasn’t used to the fast-paced NYC walking.
· I had packed for spring in March/April. For me, this meant shorts and maybe one pair of jeans and a light jacket. Needless to say, Ellie and I were underdressed. I don’t know if maybe Ellie borrowed some of Lav’s clothes? If I packed more warmly for them? Anyway, Bard loaned me a pair of jeans. We were both thinner then. However, I’m not sure how it worked because I was a lot shorter.
· Bard and I went to a restaurant on our night out. I don’t remember where we were or what we ate. I just remember talking nonstop.
o No matter how fast you can type, you can’t type nearly as fast as you can speak. And as mentioned in the previous entry, Bard hated the phone.
o As a result, whenever we were together there was a sense (at least for me) of making up for lost time. We would talk and talk and talk. I have no idea what we talked about.
