Goodbye Camille

A few days ago I lost a friend to cancer. What a devastating blow for me considering I had just reunited with her after more than a decade of being apart. Her name was Camille and our friendship began in the halls of our fondly remembered high school, Morgan Park. When my class graduated I remember many of us naively promising to "KIP" (keep in touch) and stay friends forever; not knowing that life did not always permit fulfillment of such promises. You go your separate ways, go to college and/or start new careers, meet new people, start families and before you know it 10 years have passed and you have not spoken to half the people you went to high school with. If you're lucky though, you will have that one special person who was looked upon by your high school class as the ultimate leader and (in my case "she") will take on the difficult and sometimes tedious task of bringing you and your former classmates back together again....this is what we refer to as The Class Reunion (thanks Kaita).

Excuse my tangent, I digress...Camille and I weren't BFF's in high school but we had a mutual respect for one another; I was shy, quiet and subdued and Camille was loud, boisterous and sometimes bordering on obnoxious but never phony or fake, Camille was just.....Camille. Almost a year ago, before the birth of my daughter, my husband caught up with Camille via our high school alumni website. When he told me that she had cancer and was in the later stages, the only thing that ran through my mind was...."Damn!" How could I let so much time go by? Now instead of celebrating this great occasion of being reunited once again; it was overshadowed with this sadness and dread....well that's what I thought.

Camille and I had agreed to meet and catch-up and as I approached her home I felt anxious, what would I say? how would I act? would I break-down and cry? which is "so me" to do...the overemotional drama queen that I am. I felt a bit queasy and my hands were clammy as I rang her bell. Then, in an instant, the door opened and all the fear and anxiety was gone and overtaken with this huge smile and drowning embrace. I could not get in the door quick enough before Camille was jumping up and down and screaming my name and spitting her enthusiasm at seeing me after so many years. Where was the anxiety? the sadness and grief?....where was the cancer? Camille may have had cancer but the cancer definitely did not have Camille.

As we conversed about old times, I could not believe how unbelievably "together" this woman was. Here she was with stage four cancer, a single mom raising her teenage son on the day that she had decided to shave her head instead of watching her hair fall out because of the chemo and she was jubilant and vibrant and hopeful. How could I not be inspired by that? How could I embrace sadness in the midst of so much faith and life. Camille taught me that day to live my life everyday like it was the last. To love big, to laugh big and to live big. She said that when she found out that she had cancer she vowed that she would continue to live her life as if she did not have cancer and she did. She fought it but did not let a day go by without enjoying her son, her family...her life.

That visit was the last time I saw Camille but my memories of her will be of her booming voice bouncing off the walls of our high school hallways and that special day when we were reunited and laughed as we remembered the past and shared our hopes and dreams of the future. Now normally an event like this would cause me to begin to reflect and obsess on my own mortality but that's not what Camille would have wanted. Camille would say it's not about how you die but about how you lived. I can hear her now..."Live big Syl...live big."

My last visit with Camille, while bittersweet, was definitely eye-opening. With that knowledge that we aren't promised tomorrow, shouldn't we be behooved to live everyday as if it is our last? No more putting off until tomorrow what we can do today, no more holding petty grudges, no more allowing fear to stop us from fulfilling our dreams. I am sure as a human I will falter from time to time on living my life by these practices, but I sure as hell will try. LIVE BIG!

Thank you Camille. I will miss you.