Mom and Mary at our last visit.
She heard about it on the radio where she gets all the local news. My mother’s dear friend had died and no one called her. Like my mom, Pat was in her ninth decade but they still talked often on the phone about politics or shared jokes only they would get. Not long ago Pat swooped my mom up one Saturday evening to check out a church supper in a neighboring county. This was their kind of adventure!
“Who am I going to talk to before I go to bed?” was my mom’s lament. The girls still left from the St. Mary Nursing School class of 1947 could be counted on one hand.
June, another classmate, passed on as well, right after Christmas. June was a daily caller when we were kids and my brothers and I always looked forward to those distractions for my mom so we could get away with something.
Last night she got a call this time, Mary also died. Funny but I had just run into Mary’s address and was planning to send her a photo I took last August when we drove to Missouri to visit her on my mom’s last birthday,
like we had the year before. It was almost a tradition. Wish I had sent the photo earlier.
My mom mails me all the obits as these women’s stories were woven through my life as well in our overlapping years. I miss their young faces that I remember.
While we are so grateful for her long life, I can’t imagine most of my friends all passing on leaving me holding the memories, can you?
If you count a circle of friends, treat them well and love them lavishly. Life is short.
Hope for the best,
Tish
PS Another nursing school friends post…Friends for the 70 Year Journey
Hope for the Best 
Oh , yes , I have been accompanying my parents to funerals of friends that I have known since I was a child.It is sobering and it is so true to cherish your friends .I can’t imagine yet going through this , but in a way we are going through this with our parents.
Yes, it is a shared grief but on a different level.