She was my sister's friend. They were girls together, part of a tight circle of silly, sometimes reckless innocents. They went out and got into trouble. They dated boys and went to bars and parties, did each other's hair and critiqued each other's outfits. They drove each other home, and giggled in classrooms, gossiped and bickered, and laughed, and laughed. They raced into adulthood, hell-bent for love, and they were in each other's weddings. They had babies, the girls, some of them, and helped each other through. They cried together when bad things happened and supported each other, good and bad. In time they were sisters.
And then she was my mother's friend, when my sister moved away. The girls stayed in touch, stayed close, well after the time most of us have left behind the friends we made as children. My parents became part of her life, and she became part of our family as well. She talked to my mother every week for many years. She fought for her children, just as my sister had to fight for hers. My mother listened and she listened to my mother. Of different generations, she and my mother nonetheless became close. She stayed. It mattered.
Though I rather idealized those girls when I was little and envied them their fun, I was only a little brother -- an ignoble thing to be among teenagers. I was fond of them and they tolerated me and that was just as it usually is. They snuck me in with them to see The Exorcist, which I don't remember any of them actually watching, or if they did, only through their fingers. They tolerated me when I sat on the bed and watched them curl their hair and talk about boyfriends. I worried for them when they got in late, or drank too much, or had their hearts broken. I watched them as they became beautiful and was glad when they were happy. And then I had friends of my own.
Later when my sister and I came home from the homes we'd made elsewhere with other people, that was when I started to see these women as my friends as well. May not have been how they saw me -- and why should they? -- but I looked forward to seeing them, together again, just as some people love to see a favorite band come out of retirement for yet another farewell tour.
And there she was, my sister's friend, maybe the shyest of them all, the least worldly, but reliable and true, and in her way never changing, always the first one back through the door. Of all of my sister's friends she became the one I knew best. Through my mother's weekly or more than weekly conversations with her, I knew the events of her life and the lives of her two sons. I knew something of her work; driving a school bus, working as a nurse's aid, selling retail. I knew something of her worries and her pains; the sister she lost, the brother, her father. I came to know and sympathize with the physical pain she suffered for years from bones old before she was, and ailments never properly understood, and disappointments just as all of us face if we live long enough to appreciate the good we get.
Hell, I knew her cat, Spartan, and I never so much as met the beloved and troublesome creature.
When my parents grew old, she was there. When my sister came home, she was there. When I came home, she was there. She cooked for us, baked for us, went out to eat with us, stayed in with us. When we went to the hospital she came with us. When my sister had another grand baby, she was there. She was present. How many of us are, or can be? She was. When my father came home to die, she was with us even then. He was her friend by then as well. Called her "daughter" by then too.
And by then, she was my friend as well. She and I had conversations neither of us might ever had imagined we would. We talked sometimes when my sister -- a woman who never walks but she runs -- would run out of gas at last and fall asleep on the sofa. We talked about my sister, my parents, her family and mine. We talked about life and love and all the things adults might talk about if the hour's late enough and the room's otherwise quiet, and everyone we love is accounted safe for the day. She was always the last one to leave. We'd turn the porch-light on so she could see to her car, and wave as she left.
She was nobody's fool, that woman, about most things. Like the rest of us though she could be pettish, and stubborn, too easily hurt and too quick to retreat to opinion as if it was an argument to be made or any kind of an answer to an uncomfortable question. We avoided God, in whom she believed, and politics in which we could not have disagreed more strongly. In the end, in touch more regularly because of social media, I came close to not wanting to be her friend because of her politics, and mine. Irreconcilable is where we were on that. I think that it is entirely possible that we stayed friends on social media almost as a penance or a test, just to see if we could. On rare occasions we would comment on each other's less than civil postings, but we were quick thereafter to follow with a kindness. She was my sister's friend, and my mother's. There were times I had to keep that in mind.
Whatever all that meant, she was still present in our lives, in mine. Whoever we were now, whatever we believed, that simply did not change. I called her sister and she called me brother and while there was always a smile in there, in time we meant it and it meant something to us both.
Just a few weeks ago she finally had the knee-surgery I'd been hearing about since forever. It seemed to go well and she was recovering and felt good about it. I sent flowers and wished her a quick recovery. Last time I checked in, she was doing well. And then, quite suddenly she wasn't. And then to the shock and irreparable loss to her husband, sons, and family, she died, at 59.
Karen Montgomery Morrow was her name. My sister's friend of more than forty years. My mother's friend. Mine. I cannot imagine what it will mean to so many now she's gone.
I took a picture one trip home. It's a stupid snapshot, taken too quick with a shaking hand because we were sitting again on my mother's couch and laughing. It's not a "good" picture of either of us, as my mother said at the time. (But then my mother's definition of a "good" picture is usually a photograph taken a good two yards from the subject when everyone's had the time to pose and do their hair and smile without showing too many teeth.) My mother's right, of course, she always is. (Didn't raise no fools, anyway.) But that fuzzy picture I took of Karen laughing on the couch beside me? That is the picture of mother's "other" daughter, my sister's friend, and mine that I choose to put here, with this. That's the Karen I'll remember. Always there, always present, always laughing, always loving, appearances be damned. She said when she saw it, "Well, that's how we are."
Well, that's how we were then. That's who I'll remember. That's the friend I loved.
May she rest in the peace she earned, none more so.
Night, sister. Home safe.
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