a friend that year

It was some short story I read years and years ago. One character says to another, "We were friends that year." That has always felt like one of the saddest things I've ever read. Of course friendships change as we change, but the idea that they are somehow temporary saddens me.

I've been lucky in my friendships, I think. I have friends that I've known for more than 4 decades now. We're not the women we were when we met, when we were so young, but the women we are now are still friends.

The woman,in the photos to the left was a friend. Helen died a few days ago, after fighting cancer for more than four years. She died at home, with her brother and sister and an old friend. People who had seen her during this final illness said that she was fighting until the end. She would.

She was one of the reasons I moved to Seattle in the first place. She told me about a studio apartment in the building she lived in ($100 a month!) She told me about this job at the women's natural food collective. She and I used to cook together, nearly asphyxiating ourselves with some overheated spice mix from Paul Prudhomme's first cookbook. We watched gay male porn together (awkward). We talked about books and movies and gossiped about the insular and drama-laden lesbian community in Seattle.

Helen was one of the co-owners of The Wild Rose, the lesbian bar where I worked when I was going to the University of Seattle. Helen and I would stay after the bar had closed up and play those table top video games, Pacman and one of those Pong things. We lived in the same building until she and her partner bought a place out in the Central District.

Our friendship didn't really survive my leaving Seattle for graduate school. It was hard staying connected to Seattle and I'd heard that Helen was relaying this false story about me. Gossips gossip and I shouldn't have been hurt that being out of town meant I was fodder now, but it did.

I haven't talked with Helen in something like five years, Haven't seen her in closer to a decade. I don't really know where I'm headed with this, but she had been a friend that year and I am sad she's gone.