Barbara J. Hamby

Good Friends

An article in the newspaper a day or so ago about two elderly women who had been friends most of their lives touched me. It reminded me of the loss of a good friend of more than sixty years. She succumbed to cancer several years ago. She lived too far away for us to get together often. Sometimes we didn’t see each other for several years, but we were always in touch.

As part of a project of cataloging old letters, I’m re-reading a stack of letters from her. After we both had email, we kept in touch more regularly, but I don’t have all those emails. What I do have is enough to preserve her memory and bring back all the good times we had and the confidences we shared. She was very good at letting me know how important our friendship was to her. I’m not sure I did as well, but I really hope she knew. Because it was, and still is, important.

When we were in high school, there was turmoil in her home. One of her sisters, married to a World War II serviceman, died in childbirth. Her parents’ marriage did not survive. She hung out at our house a lot and became like another sister to me. After we were grown, she often spoke about how much she appreciated my mother’s patience.

When my parents left Seattle for Houston in 1950 with my two youngest sisters, another sister and I stayed behind. That sister got married and moved into our family home with her new husband. I moved in with my good friend and her mother and sister until my friend moved away to be married, and I did the same, a few months later.

After she knew her days were numbered, she suggested a cruise for several of us who had gone to school together, along with our daughters. We took a weekend trip to Vancouver and Victoria, B.C. from Seattle on the Royal Caribbean Radiance of the Seas. It was a wonderful time of reminiscing, laughing and giggling.

She fought her disease with everything she had, lived and loved fiercely in the years, more than expected, after she was diagnosed. She spent all the quality time she could with her husband, her daughters and their families, and her many friends.

As I approach my eightieth year, I’m losing more and more friends and relatives. It won’t get better, so I might as well get use to it.

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