Girlfriends are forever

A couple of years ago, my friend Ellen said, “You know we’ve never had a fight.” That was 6 months after she was diagnosed with cancer, 6 months of chemo and side effects and no hair and her hearty brave spirit.

No fights. Not bad for 50 years together — through knee socks and proms and frat parties, through cheerleading when it was still cool, through barefoot days in California, through hitchhiking in Spain with one pair of jeans, through weekends wherever the hell we felt like going at whatever last minute we decided to go, through dancing and talking, and dancing and talking, and boyfriends, boyfriends, boyfriends.

We had an easy equation for joy back then. Did I mention boyfriends?

We only dated the same guy once. She saw him first. I liked him better. Everything else about that event is my story now; she can’t tell her side anymore. It doesn’t matter, her secrets are still safe with me, that’s forever.

“I don’t know how to thank you” she said, after I brought her home after one of her chemo treatments. “We should thank each other for a half century of friendship,” I replied. We hugged in her kitchen, next to the Vitamix. She was battling her illness with beta-carotene and zinc.

I thought so much, during her final weeks, about what made her so special as a friend. About what makes friends special. What made eight, ten, twelve people rush to her bedside and sit, waiting, remembering, hurting. And I wondered what all of us — what I — can still learn from that devotion, that loyalty, the way that people stuck to her true blue.

Everyone who knew her may have a different answer. She was easy to be with, like a sweater you put on that doesn’t itch or scratch. She was kooky, a translucent blueeyed blonde, a bit of Goldie Hawn, a bit of “Exercise with Gloria,” always moving. She was a modern day snake oil salesman, a QVCaholic who pumped you with devices and creams, promising a miracle cure.

If only she could have found one herself.

Ellen could listen, she could let you get the crazies out. She was accepting, extraordinarily accepting of her friends, never ever mean. She was guileless — how rare in this self-promoting world. No conceit even in her Zumba pants with long tassels parading around her butt. On her, they looked natural, earthy, real.

It’s often said the way to cement a friendship is to share not your strengths but your weaknesses. She allowed herself to ask for a foot rub, a head rub, a pot of soup, even before she was sick. She let people in. And they came in, and they stayed there. And as people stepped one after another into her final hospital room, I thought that’s one big lesson right there.

I felt her pain these past couple of years, as she went from the

woman we believed could conquer the odds to the one who waged war against a mortal enemy that wielded a sledgehammer while she had only a little stick. After 50 years, you feel someone’s pain.

Years back Ellen was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame for her work as a cheerleading coach. She’d been an Eagles football cheerleader, a long-time high school phys ed. teacher, strong, solid. She knew how to rally the troops, go for the goal. She gave this game, the hardest ever, the old college try.

Recently, my Mom’s dear friend Sheila came to visit. With her still bright pink lips she said, “I could tell your mother anything, absolutely anything. I’ve never had another friend like that. I’ve never been able to replace her.”

This, even though Mom’s dead 35 years. I could tell Ellen anything too.

So maybe the best quality in a friend is ultimately the one that stays with you, the one you never forget. Maybe the one that makes you change, that takes a part of the person who’s gone and makes it your own.

Maybe it’s the one — in my case — that will make me think, Ellen was like that. And you know what, it was a pretty good way to be.

Like Sheila and my Mom, I’ll never be able to replace her.

Real girlfriends are forever.