Lord Love a Duck

Faye Junkin Hudnall

March 10, l946-September 30, 2008

"Why did you do all this for me?" asked Wilbur. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you."

"You have been my friend, replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a little. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that." Charlotte's Web by E.B.Wise

Today is the first year anniversary of the death of one of my closest friends. She died too young.

I was not prepared to miss her so much. We were going to grow old together and merrily joked about retiring with our tight little group of friends to the same retirement home fully prepared to scandalize the local social life. When she was diagnosed with what her sister in a moment of macabre humor referred to in the Southern vernacular as a 'wasting disease', we laughed and made light because all of us somehow believed she would be spared. Never did we envision it would come so suddenly and unawares. I think it would be fair to say, we felt robbed. I know I did. It was if someone had stolen her from us even though we knew it spared her much suffering. We were not prepared to accept one of the most powerful lessons of middle age—that we had reached the time in our lives when life most often teaches us that our youthful illusion of 'invincibility is just that, an illusion.

Now, I understand the pang I felt at the church funerals of older members as I watched the casket being rolled out to the hearse and saw the remaining friends left in its wake. Now I have been one of them. Mortality among our friends is a sorrow with a different pain; unlike that of losing a parent, or mate or child, any of which is a terrible loss. Somehow the death of a close friend is different. It takes an important piece of the mirror given to us through the experience of friendship to know ourselves. We aren't married to this kind of friend, though strong marriages incorporate friendship into that relationship. We don't parent them either, even if we begin to enjoy our children as friends in a way as they grow older. No, we are simply friends with another person just as ourselves…nothing else. The ability to be and have a friend is an essential piece of being human.

When she died I could not believe the depth of my grief. I felt as if my tears were an outward testimony to the beauty of her life. I grieved for her husband, for her children and her close knit family , for myself and our friends, for her struggle, but most of all, I grieved for the loss in the world of her light.

In the weeks and months following her death, our little group of friends began the slow and tender work of weaving our friendship across her missing place. The heart and soul this required has been holy work—twenty five years of living side by side leaves an enormous hole. Everything we did only pointed out that she was gone—from the number of reservations needed when we went out to eat, to the number of birthdays we celebrated. We have had to weave our love for each other across her missing place. Looking into each other's faces now we know we will experience this again. I don't for a minute believe it will ever be easier. Mortality has become the leavening in our love for each other.

Once again September brings Fall and the winding down of the year. This time it also brings a settling of grief. The high water mark has been reached and we have survived. Life is moving on. So are we. We have discovered in her empty place much remains. Our times together have created a treasure of stories and memories. We see all around us the evidence of her generous and beautiful life. She lives on in our hearts.

Faye so loved Fall in the mountains at her cabin. One Christmas, weary of decorating, she sprayed her Thanksgiving decorations with gold glitter paint and kept them up for Christmas, declaring that she was only following the natural tendency in middle age to simplify. "Lord love a duck!" as she would always say, " I am so over decorating! " The good times we shared are countless and sustaining. At year's end we will celebrate the marriage of her oldest son. I'm sure there will be more tears, but now they are more often sweet ones. Our joy at this event is a beautiful witness to how her life moves on through us to continue blossoming. My understanding and acceptance of that has left me filled with an enormous sense of gratefulness for our friendship. I have such a full heart. I guess you could say it's the glow left from her light.

I divested myself of despair

and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course
no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing
of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.
The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hours,

and God, as promised, proves

to be mercy clothed in light.

"Notes From the Other Side" From Otherwise, by Jane Kenyon