On New Year’s Day I Googled the name of one of my mother’s friends— someone I loved very much and had known since childhood. The top result was her obituary.
The friend had been present for almost my entire life; a bubbly, effervescent and beautiful person from a big Irish Catholic family, with whom my mom had a relationship both superficial and intimate. She worked as a flight attendant. I spent nights at her condo, with her funny, handsome husband, when I was little. Shortly after my mom married my stepfather (an abusive, hilarious, charming and immature drunk) the friend disappeared. I later learned they had a falling out, and the friend refused my mother’s calls. I should have told her why, the friend said to me later, after my mother had died.
It was that friend I called on the night I couldn’t reach my mother on the phone in May 2010, that friend who assured me my mother was fine, and that friend who met me in the airport terminal…
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