Friends

My dear friend, Colleen, and I made plans last week to have lunch together at my house today. I made banana bread and chicken salad with cantaloupe and green grapes. We drank hot green tea from my pretty tea cups and talked about the Easter service at church, our new pastor, our husbands, our kids, grandkids and our former lives (the young and foolish years).

We were on our third teacup re-fill when her phone rang. Her twenty-year-old son called from work to tell her his flu virus was worse today and he was having trouble breathing. The extra slice of banana bread I had just cut sat untouched as she began devising a plan to meet him at the emergency room of Zeeland Hospital. "Who will drive you?" "Shall I call your doctor?" I heard her ask him as the serenity of the afternoon flowed into chaos. She asked me how to get to the hospital, as I retrieved her coat. "Just follow me," I told her, and in a second we were a couple of little cars merging with noisy traffic, her mimicking my every lane change until we entered the parking lot of our destination. We quickly exchanged goodbyes through the opened window of our cars and she promised to give me an update later.

This is what I saw when I walked back into my home. It struck me how quickly the entire momentum of our time together changed with that one phone call.

It is so quiet now. No more laughter. No more heart to heart feelings going back and forth, creating small smiles and teary eyes of understanding. But on my kitchen window sill, a card that Colleen brought with her today explains everything, and I pick it up and re-read it.

Yup...that's it, and that's what I'll miss until the next time.