My friend Fran.

Just a little while ago, I found out that my friend Fran passed away up in NY. It happened just yesterday.... her husband J called me this morning to let me know. Fran was just my age..... I've known her since high school days.... I've known her husband since the 5th grade.... we've been friends all these years.

I've written about Fran in these pages..... she was 'my friend F' who called me a few years ago to tell me that she had throat cancer. We had been keeping in touch via letters and eMail since I moved from up north, but her 'cancer news' (as she called it) was something that wasn't 'eMail-worthy,' as she said. She wanted to tell me, in her own words over the phone, in her own voice.... because she didn't know if she would even have a voice at all after the surgery.

Fran's voice did return.... not exactly the same as before, but I still knew who was calling when she said 'hello' over the phone. She went through surgeries and treatments over these past few years.... every time I spoke to her on the phone, she would tell me that her biggest regret in life was her very first cigarette. Because after that first one, there was just no going back for her, she said. When I think of all the times her husband tried to talk her into quitting, I could just cry. We all talked to her about giving up smoking. It just didn't work.

And now she's gone. To make the sadness even sadder..... Fran's oldest son and his wife are expecting their first child in a matter of weeks. I'm sitting here just shaking my head at all of this....... Fran was such a good mom.... she would have been the best of grandmothers.

During one of the long phone conversations Fran and I had (when she still had her voice), I told her how much I admired her. She was the kind of mom who made everything so much fun for her children...... she and her husband were united in the upbringing of their sons, both of whom have grown into such wonderful men. Fran was always confident enough to allow her children to see the world through their own eyes..... she never peppered them with her own views, her own likes and dislikes...... she wanted her sons to form their own opinions and come to their own conclusions. Fran gave advice when they asked for it ("and sometimes when they didn't ask for it," she told me) and then she told her sons to study the situation and do what they thought was best.

My heart was breaking on the phone this morning with Fran's husband J. I wanted to scream out and just cry..... for her husband, for her sons, for her brother, for her daughter-in-law and the tiny baby who will never be held in his grandmother's arms.

When Fran's sons were born, it was at a time when I was trying to have a baby of my own. That just never happened, and I told Fran how jealous I felt that she was pregnant and I couldn't get pregnant. I worked hard to get rid of that jealousy before Fran's oldest son was born..... jealousy is an awful gut-wrenching emotion that shows no mercy and has no bounds if you let it overtake you. Shortly after Fran gave birth, I brought gifts to her baby boy and held him in my arms. I had been able to let go of that jealousy long before Fran's due-date, but holding that little baby in my arms cured me forever of any jealous feelings, for anyone, for anything. I don't believe that I've had a jealous emotion in all these years, and that was over 35 years ago now. That's one of the greatest miracles of babies..... you hold one in your arms and nothing else, absolutely nothing else, can give you more joy and let you feel more love. Fran's sons grew up calling me "Aunt L" and the sound of their voices saying that was just priceless.

Fran's husband had called here a few weeks ago, to tell me that 'Hospice' was coming to the house to help Fran stay comfortable. She had lost her voice for good then, so her husband put the speaker-phone on and I could talk to Fran and J could hear what I was saying also, and tell me that Fran was shaking her head 'no' or nodding her head 'yes.' I held myself together during that phone call, until the very end when I told Fran that I loved her. I lost it altogether after I hung up the phone. Funny thing....... for all the years we had known one another, Fran and I hardly ever said "I love you" to each other. But that changed when she was first diagnosed with the throat cancer.... we began saying I love you both over the phone and in our eMails.

There is such an irony here...... one of the things I admired about Fran when we were in our 20s and 30s was that she was never afraid to voice her opinions. She didn't care who agreed with her or not.... she knew who she was and she didn't hesitate to 'put her two cents' into a conversation. And 'two cents' from Fran, in any given conversation, was worth a fortune because her opinions were well thought-out and meant not to aggravate a conversation, but to enhance it. And that was the voice that was taken away. And that, to me, is just so very sad.

I cried when I got off the phone with Fran's husband J this morning...... I told my husband that Fran will never get to see her first grandchild, never get to hold the baby, to know him or her. My husband disagreed...... he believes that Fran will indeed still be around, will still be here to see that little baby.

I want to believe that also... and I'm choosing to believe that Fran's spirit will forever be here, for that baby, and for all of us who loved her for the genuine person that she was. And I do intend to visit her family after her first grandchild is born. Just as I held both of Fran's sons in my arms after they were born, my intention is to hold her grandchildren as well.