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Sarah, my second child, is the type of person who has friends forever. Where Motherhubbard and I have few long term friends that we keep in contact with and a few very close friends, Sarah is in touch with everyone she ever befriended.
Sarah has a friend she went through school with and they are still pretty good friends. Their sons play soccer together and they talk on the phone almost everyday. But my daughter is also very close to this friend’s parents. When she was growing up she spent a lot of time at their house. When she was older she house sat any time they were out of town. They had two dogs that she took care of when they were away. They always paid her very well for taking care of the dogs and house, which caused some tension between Sarah and their daughter because when they were grown, they didn’t offer the job to their daughter. They felt that Sarah would take better care with their things.

Sarah is a nurse at our local hospital and Dick, the dad, is a patient there. Sarah really loves Dick and visits him before and after her shift. She brings him food that he can’t get at the hospital and sits with him just to talk. She told me yesterday that she felt like she should spend time with him because she hadn’t seen his wife or daughter up there in several days. She has been pretty worried because she knows that Dick is pretty sick, although she hasn’t told me what is wrong with him.

I should say that Dick is a very successful business man who retired a couple of years ago as CEO of a very large international business. He is considered well off for our area. His wife was working in an airport lounge when he met her during his travels on business. He divorced his first wife and married her, bought her some new teeth and boobs and moved her to our town. She never wanted for anything. If she could buy something locally or order it from a more expensive place, she ordered it. If it didn’t have a “name” attached, she didn’t want it. If one expensive toy was good for her child, then three would be better. Now, I guess it may seem like I am putting her down, but she would tell you the same thing. She has told me on several occasions, “What’s the use of having money if you don’t make sure everyone knows you’ve got it?”

This morning I received a call from the mother. She was asking for Sarah and she was laughing. She told me she had something funny to tell Sarah that her husband had said about Sarah this morning. Then as an aside, she told me that the doctor had told her this morning that Dick has lung cancer that has spread to his bones and that he will probably live for only six months. She was laughing when she told me this news. She also said that they would give him some radiation to help ease some of his pain, but that was all they could do for him. She never stopped chuckling the whole time we were on the phone. I told her Sarah wasn’t home, that she was at work but she told me that she had checked the desk and Sarah wasn’t at work today. I told her to check Dick’s room because she stopped in there everyday before her shift. She said, “Well, I’ll be damn. I guess I’ll have to go back up there.” I don’t know what to think about this. I know that everyone reacts differently to such news, but this was just off the charts.

Sarah will be heartbroken, even though I suspect that she already knew about the cancer. She will spend even more time with Dick because she will not want him to be alone.