The mind is a very strange thing.  For some reason, I’ve been thinking about my friend Christine lately.  

Christine and I were close to the same age and she was one of the first people I became good friends with after I moved to Providence.  

She was funny, wicked smart, and looked at the world differently from pretty much anyone I knew.  She was also unhealthy for most of her adult life, chronically depressed, yet still strove to find good in almost everyone, even when she was actively shutting them out of her life.

I had spent much of my adult life alone.  She wasn’t hearing any of that, and on Thanksgiving one year, she invited me to come.  It turned into a thing, where I was actively expected each year.  For years, I would sit with her and her family.  I think partially it was for cover.  She and I were usually the only vegetarians there, so it gave her opportunity to cook more of the food she wanted.  When I got diagnosed with diabetes, she was intensely supportive, never pushing me to eat more than I should and always making a point of stopping anyone else from trying to guilt me into eating more (a common plague of social situations that revolve around food).

When I turned 30, she called me.  She wanted to know if I was freaking out (I wasn’t).  She had completely freaked out a few months earlier when it happened to her.  To me, it was just one of those things.  I had more trouble with 36, because that meant I was closer to 40 than 30.  That kind of freaked me out a bit, but that just gave me time to get over it.  Today, at 42, I’m back to being unconcerned with age.  (though I anticipate a major freakout when I turn 46).

Christine didn’t make it this far.  She went to bed one night.  She didn’t wake up the next.  It might have been intentional on her part.  It might not have.  I’ve never asked.  I didn’t think her mom needed to be put through that sort of question.  Knowing Christine, I could have easily seen it either way.  I always kind of felt she was constantly wondering if she was ready to check out of the world.  

I got that, in a pretty major way.  I wasn’t so sure at the time I wanted to stick around either.

I hadn’t seen Christine for more than a year when she passed.  I’d moved away from Providence and found it hard to work up a desire to return.  Her memorial service was what got me to come back.  I hadn’t known until then that she’d had Lyme disease for half a decade.  She hadn’t known either.  She’d finally gotten treatment for it in the year before she’d died.  She was healthier and more active than she’d ever been as an adult.

What a way to go.  When you’re finally healthy.

After she died, I saw and heard her in various ways for about a week.  I don’t mean I believe she was actually there.  I mean, I would be doing something, and I’d hear her voice saying something to me.  It was generally something funny and clever.  One time I got into the car and looked in the rear view mirror and saw her, just for a moment.  And then I heard her say “make sure you don’t crash into anything” and that was it.  This happened off and on for about a week.  Then it just stopped.  And it never happened again.

That was a long time ago.  A lot of small things have changed.  A few big ones have, too.  I’m not going to go into details about that. I’ve written about many of them in the past, and some of the more deeply personal ones, I will most likely never write about, but I will share them with close friends when the time is right.  

I don’t mourn Christine.  She had a short, but incredible, life, one filled with richness of experience, creativity and moments of major joy.  I adored her.  I miss her still sometimes, but I stopped mourning her a long time ago.  

Today, as a diabetic, as someone struggling with health, someone who spent so much of her life just not very active, I think back to friends who have died and find myself thinking “move.”  

Even as I write this, I think, “I want to get up.”  I’m ansty to get back on the treadmill again.  I’ll do that, very soon, but first I want to just say: I spent too much time, too many years wallowing in my inability to make progress with my own health.  I spent too much of my life trying to convince myself that because my medications have weight gain as a side effect, this was an excuse for not being healthier.  I spent too much of my life thinking that I wasn’t worth self improvement.

So this is where it stands:

I deserve better than I have thought of myself.

I deserve better than I have allowed myself.

I deserve better than I have treated myself.

From this day forward, I honor those who have passed by living my life by living it.  I honor myself by treating myself better than I think I deserve.  

I’ve stopped thinking I might have the strength to do this. I’m beyond that now.  Now I’m just doing it.

How about you?