Everything’s the same. Everything’s different. And that’s OK

I’m writing this Monday afternoon, just after saying goodbye to about a dozen 50-year friends with whom we spent the weekend.

This is much the same crowd I wrote about in September, after we’d spent Labor Day weekend with them in Tennessee. This year the gathering moved to Memorial Day weekend, and they met at a rental just 15 minutes from our house. We stayed at our own place and went back and forth.

Our daughter joined us for part of the time, giving me the opportunity to eat and meet with our friends now and then while Evelyn chose to stay home, away from the hubbub.

One couple decided at the last minute not to come, because they’re sitting at the hospice bedside of their 38-year-old daughter-in-law. All her family, including her two little children, are struggling with the last days of her life in a body ravaged by metastatic cancer.

And there, in just these brief paragraphs, is a picture of the thought dominating my reflection on this time together: Everything’s the same. And everything’s different.

Amid changes, consistency

Everything’s the same: Our overlapping experiences with these friends are too many to list; I can only name categories: College, jobs, weddings (ours and our kids), family crises, illnesses, vacations, church, faith. “We tell each other the same stories every year,” one friend said, “and we break out laughing every time!” In many ways, we all are the same people we first knew so long ago.

But so much is different. This year we shared news of changes with health and our retirement lives and made new accommodations for various symptoms of physical deterioration spread among several in the group.

Sunday morning we prayed for our missing friends, who are stumbling through the “valley of the shadow of death,” and remembered just last September, when they told us their daughter-in-law was cancer free.

When we met last year, I spent a great deal of energy trying to maintain a “normal” experience for Evelyn and me. I think everyone in this circle has given up on normal now, and we’re satisfied if many moments can be just nice.

Amid accommodation, pleasure

They were.

Evelyn and I sat with the crowd till 10:30 Friday night (interrupted by a quick trip home to solve a bathroom problem), and even if wandering from chair to empty chair in the living room, Evelyn was largely engaged and always pleasant.

Our daughter brought her to meet us for lunch at the historic Golden Lamb in Lebanon, Ohio Saturday. Evelyn enjoyed her meal and the time together, until she didn’t, and our daughter took her home.

She stuck with us for most of our brunch together Sunday, too. We rested in the afternoon and then hosted the crowd for hot dogs on the grill and other assorted snacks and goodies they had brought for the weekend. After a couple hours, Evelyn had had enough, and she spent the end of the evening watching a Memorial Day special on my laptop from our bed with the door closed. As everyone was leaving, I asked her if she wanted to come say goodbye, and she shook her head no.

Amid sadness, joy

All of this, if not abnormal, is certainly different. Different is our new normal now. I’m happily living with the differences most of the time. Thanks to the slowness of Evelyn’s decline and the growing body of help we’re receiving from friends and family and paid caregivers, I’m free to pursue much I enjoy.

I’m learning to squeeze in activities while still keeping my eye on Evelyn. (She sat on the deck and watched me plant flowers one day last week, and I didn’t need to worry about her wandering out the front door while I was occupied outside.) I’m more and more at peace with just helping her (and me) pleasingly survive.

But I am nostalgic and sentimental, and as we said goodbye to our friends Monday, I couldn’t push aside all the memories of happy, “normal” times with them throughout the last five decades. I find much catharsis in tears, but I always try to hold them back or hide them when I’m in public. This morning, that was a losing battle. 

Last year when I was talking with one of these friends about the new nature of our lives, she mused, “At some point you realize, ‘This is the last time for this.’”  

Monday morning the anticipation of last times piled onto memories of former times. It was a combination of sadness with joy that for me now is normal.