The Gift of Friendship - Part I

Friendship happens in the most unexpected ways. Ten years ago Linda and I went to an estate sale in the beautiful, rolling countryside outside Charlottesville, Virginia. It was one of those special sales that everyone hopes to find -- antique furniture from a hundred-year-old farmhouse, old tools, farm equipment, and items to numerous to mention. Crowds of people had already gathered when we arrived and the rapid fire sound of the auctioneer's voice echoed over the land. Linda and I were more interested in the old farmhouse then the sale, and walked around the house looking in the windows at the empty rooms. All the furniture had been taken out because the floors and walls were eaten by termites. Who had lived here for all those years, we wondered?
At that moment an impeccably dressed lady walks up and introduces herself. "Hello, my name's Virginia. My parents own the farm."
"I just love your farm," Linda says. "It reminds me of my farm in Oregon."
"My father and mother lived here for eighty-five years. I've just had to put them in a nursing home."
"That's so sad," I say.
Soon we are in deep conversation. It turns out that Virginia was born upstairs in the farmhouse, along with her two sisters; they didn't have water or electricity until nineteen fifty-four; she grew up here and now lives on a piece of land her father split off for her. By the end of the talk we were all feeling such a deep connection that tears were in our eyes.
Little did I know, but in six months Linda and I would be the new owners of the 130 acre farm, with its half-mile of river frontage, streams, old hardwood forest, and three springs. We gutted and renovated the old house, and when we moved on the land Virginia became a close friend -- even more, she became family.
And now, ten years later, she is in hospice, dying of cancer.
Although we came from two different worlds, we seemed to recognize something in each other. I was a "Northerner" (a Canadian no less) and the South was like another world; Virginia had never met anyone from Canada. I had travelled all over the world; Virginia had never been on an airplane and in sixty-five years had only made a few trips within a seventy-mile radius of home. I had written books; Virginia taught high school for thirty years.
When she became our neighbor, I got into the habit of dropping by to visit her and her husband Bob a few times a week. We would talk about everything, from what it was like growing up in the South, to local gossip, to our views on television shows, politics, and spirituality. All four of us had our health problems, which often became a topic of conversaton -- Bob has post-polio disease and is in a wheelchair, Linda has an auto-immune illness, Virginia had problems with her heart, and I went through prostate cancer and melanoma. Our favorite topic was always our dogs -- Linda and I had two Australian Shepherds, and I had helped Virginia buy a puppy, who meant everything to her.
Virginia was always the gracious host, fixing iced tea, baking a cake, or lending us a book she had just read. She was always what I imagined to be the perfectly mannered Southern lady. She liked to visit the farm and see how we had fixed up the farm buildings her father had built with his own hands. She loved the sheep and the goats as much as I did, and even helped dock the tails of the baby lambs.
As Linda and I got to know her better, we found out that her husband Bob had verbally (and sometimes physically) abused her over a period of forty years; they had not been intimate for years. When we met her, her self-esteem was so shattered it was amazing she could function at all. Bob had managed to isolate her from just about everyone -- except his two brothers, their wives, and Linda and I.
As time went on Linda and I affirmed who she was and helped her put the pieces of her life back together. We convinced her to see a therapist and encouraged her to move out of the house. After a roller coaster of emotional ups and downs lasxting several years, she finally managed to leave her husband and start a new life .
For the first time ever, she stepped into her true self, entertaining friends at the independent living center where she lived, making day trips with the senior center, and going out to movies.
Just as she was beginning to live life in all its fullness, she found out she had cancer. Unfortunately this was also the time Linda and I moved to Maui but we kept up through e-mails, photos, and phone calls.
We hoped one day she would come and visit us in Hawaii. Then last week she called to say that the cancer had spread throughout her body and she may just have a few weeks to live.