Never will I forget

Fall. This is a time when leaves fall and sure it is pretty but lately, I can’t stop thinking about how dead they are…how there is a time to live and a time to die.

My friend Jennie died last Thursday. She had Li Fraumeni Syndrome which is a rare mutation of the P53 gatekeeping gene. This means that she got recurrent cancers…three to be exact before she passed.

Jennie and I met in College. She was a vivacious freshmen when I was a Junior. I first saw her walking into my BacMD class with her cane and I wondered what was wrong with her. I thought perhaps an accident….a temporary blemish on her beauty but her cane didn’t go away. When I found out she was my resident (I was an RA that year), I couldn’t wait to pry into her life. Yes, it is wrong to be so nosy but Jennie had a magnetic personality. She was un-abashing about her cancer and demanding of your love.

One of the first things she told me as her RA was how many canes she had and how each butterfly on her cane represented love. Little did I know how influential Jennie and her cane would be on my life. That year, we cried together, we shared many many adventures, and she forced me to see the good in everyone and everything. For someone so young, so plagued by bad luck, she was both innocent and mature. She was unwavering in her friendships, unapologetic about her misfortunes, and above all, lovely in her sense of humor.

Jennie made me the first scrap book I ever owned. She flew to Utah to see me. I visited her in Colorado when she got her glioblastoma. She took me to eat pasta in a wig and allowed me to wheel her around the butterfly garden near her home. She asked me during that last visit how I would wish to die. I told her and in response, she confided that her biggest wish is to die in her sleep. That wish was granted.

I hate hate hate that she is died but I don’t regret knowing her. I only wish we had more time.