Hedgehog

On Death and the Death of a (Former, sadly) Friend

I learned yesterday that a friend I had some years ago died, very recently, of cancer at age 61. Its impact was like a wrecking ball slamming in my stomach and staying there.
br> I'd met Sandra about 9 or 10 years ago. I was part of a little email group on the net called the Collective 37. The Collective, 5 people from various parts of the country, met on dominance & submission bulletin board. While the board generally comprised odes and woes about the lifestyle, my compadres and I had individually started posting there, either to make fun of Lord This or Sir That and to poke holes in some of the lunacy that went on there. ("Online Protectors?" Gimme a break.)

None of us knew each other, but started to recognize kindred spirits and we admired each other's wit and brilliance. Sandra was one of them and she was wicked and funny. She could be pit bull mean too sometimes. We happened to both live in Philadelphia, and after being in this little email group for awhile, we eventually met up.

We spent a LOT of time together, running up to New Hope, New York, breezing around Philadelphia. She could be pretty wild, stealing ash trays from Le Bec Fin, chairs from Society Hill B&Bs, joining a wedding reception (where we grabbed some cake and offered our congratulations).

It got to be too much for me; I was always afraid we'd be arrested. Which was sad, because for awhile, we were close as sisters. I really loved her like I've loved very few people in my life, except for my sister. It was a very intense kind of friendship, and I would even go so far to say that if we'd been lesbians, we might have been lovers. I'm not wired that way, and neither was Sandra, but that's an indication of what that friendship was like.

After that year, I never saw her or heard from her again. I would periodically check obituary websites because she smoked like a chimney, and I was afraid someday she might be murdered.

I checked again on the 27th of December and was shocked when I saw that Sandra had died December 6, at 61, of cancer in her home in Society Hill.

I'm reminded of one of the last lines from Stephen King's "The Body" (paraphrased). "Although I hadn't seen her in years, I know I'll miss her forever."

RIP

posted by Isabelle Mauvaise @ 11:46 AM