Friends wonder how I have so many close friends.
Friends say this after reading my memories after another friend has died.
Some tell me that whenever they learn that I’m grieving another loss, they say they are relieved to have fewer friends; they will grieve less. Yet, as I tell some of them, only by absorbing our friends’ bountiful love in our shared journeys am I granted this gift – yes, it is a gift – of experiencing intense sadness when a friend is gone.
One lifelong friend observed this week that “we travel in soul clusters.” I’d never heard her phrase before, and now I will never forget it.
My friend Harriett and I moved through life as a soul cluster, beginning in our college days. In time, we expanded our soul cluster to include David. He’d been my boyfriend in high school, but when Harriett and he met at my wedding, they’d found their life partner and were married a year later. Our soul cluster widened when Elle, their daughter, was born, then it grew larger when she married, and larger still with the births of their two sons.
Our soul cluster. Harriett and me at Elle’s wedding (top), and David, Harriett, me, Elle, Jésus and their sons during my Denver visit in November 2023.
When I was a senior in college, Harriett and I shared an apartment in San Francisco and rowed together at Mills College. We were best friends, then, and forever.
Last November I flew to Denver to be with Harriett and her family for five days. Our time together was bittersweet as I watched Harriett struggle with pancreatic cancer that was already taking its toll. We took short walks, watched movies and told stories, replaying our happy times together. We laughed, as only Harriett and I did, while I breathed in the goodness of their marriage that overflowed with love and tenderness, devotion and companionship. I felt a daughter's love in Elle's presence in this stage of her parents’ lives. I took in the joy I saw on Harriett’s face when her grandsons burst into her home, filling it with love, toddler spunk and joyful energy.
Those precious five days of our soul cluster’s love-in live inside of me. On my last morning there, Harriett carried down the stairs a dress she made and wanted me to see. She was an extraordinary quilter, and she'd applied those skills to making this dress out of t-shirts she’d collected at more than 100 Grateful Dead concerts. Her creation is a work of art, infused with Harriett in every stitch she tenderly sewed. It embodies the essence of my dear friend.
Harriett died peacefully at home on Saturday night with David and Elle with her.
Learn more about Harriett’s life, here.
My advice: Visit your friends (not only online through wonderful gateways like Caring Bridge), whenever you can, especially when they are experiencing an illness that could take them from your life or dealing with a circumstance that has left them in need of a friend’s touch and guidance.
On Wednesday morning, another friend reached out via email to share news she knew I’d want to know. What I love most is her suggesting several ways that I could be a good friend to her and her family as she recovers from surgery.
This is what FRIENDS do! Friends want to be there for you. Just give them a signal of how best they can be.
Her email message: “Some of you may or may not know this but I'm having open heart surgery tomorrow. It's been in the works for the past few years and I'm finally having my less-than-stellar pulmonary valve replaced. With bovine tissue! I'm going to be part cow. On a more serious note, (the bovine thing is actually real, though) I was born with heart disease and had my first open heart at 10 months old. This will be my second go-round but the first I'll actually remember, for better or for worse.
“I'm a true believer in radical transparency. When I was younger, I had a lot of anxiety around new experiences and my mom always said ‘just tell people you're nervous.’ Seems like a funny piece of advice for someone who is already feeling vulnerable but somehow saying ‘I'm nervous’ out loud always made me feel powerful. It didn't even matter what the response was (usually shrugged shoulders) because I had named it. So yeah, I'm nervous. But I know this is the right thing and I'm absolutely in the best of hands. I've learned that there are times when we are called to be resilient and there are other times when it's essential that we are vulnerable, with our hearts wide open.”
“It's essential that we are vulnerable, with our hearts wide open.”
Like my “soul cluster” with Harriett, this friend’s words touched me deeply, in part because they reminded me of my recent sudden vulnerability when I broke my fibula and learned how to “rally” my friends around me while keeping my heart wide open.
Then, on Sunday,
a woman, who has been a friend since we worked on a campaign in the mid-1980s, hosted a High Tea for three friends who know her and know each other. One among us had just emerged from several very challenging years. This invitation gave each of us the opportunity to show our love for our mutual friend. Also, in pulling us away from the hectic pace of our lives, we settled into a conversation only friends have.
HIGH TEA with friends awaits.
As you read this Friday’s Substack, I am in Maine, far north of my Cambridge home, at the invitation of another longtime friend. After losing two dear friends in a short time, I paid attention to my sadness and knew I needed to be with another dear friend. So, for a few days, I will shut down my social media, look out her home’s windows at the Atlantic Ocean, read a book, listen to her play classical piano, take walks, eat well, sleep late, and take my yoga mat with me.
MY FRIENDS’ TOUR, aka my upcoming book tour
If you are a friend, you’ve surely heard something about my plans for taking Locker Room Talk on a nationwide tour in the fall. Chances are you’ve heard me talk about this journey as actually being my FRIENDS’ tour since I am choosing where I will go based on where my friends live. And I’ve asked lots of these friends to help me out by moderating my book talk in your town/city. Happy to say, my friends are saying YES!
THANK YOU!
WEEKLY BOOK BLURB:
“In the early 1980s, I interviewed baseball players in locker rooms due to the courageous court fight that Melissa Ludtke had waged for equal access against Major League Baseball in 1978. To read her book, Locker Room Talk, is to relive our challenges as pioneering women sportswriters. She reminds us of the emotional strain that discrimination imposes on those who experience it and then shows us how she overcame it. Brava!” ~ Claire Smith, the only woman to be saluted in Cooperstown as the Baseball Writers of America’s Career Excellence honoree
When Claire was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, she reached out to me, as her friend, to be with her at this special occasion. I accepted her invitation and I was there to applaud her magnificent achievement as I watched baseball honor her.
(Left to right), Me, Claire Smith, Lisa Nehus Saxon (former baseball writer)
Claire and I will do a fall 2024 book event together in Philadelphia, where she teaches at the Claire Smith Center for Sports Journalism at Temple University.
30% discount on pre-order of Locker Room Talk + FREE shipping
If you want to pre-order Locker Room Talk, go to Rutgers University Press website, type in my book’s name, and use this code RUSA30
Remembering a Woman Champion Musher
In this week, when Dallas Seavey won his record sixth Iditarod Race after failing to adequately gut the moose he killed along the way, I’d like us to remember the apt-named Susan Butcher. I learned about her from my friend Jesse Cooke who each morning includes me on his emailed message about moments in our nation’s history.
Beautiful essay, Melissa. Last night I watched Paul Simon on the Stephen Colbert show. Colbert has had to deal with great loss in his life. As he and Simon were talking about grief and faith, Colbert said that he sees “grief as gratitude, as love.” Grief is proof we have loved.
Colbert’s way with words reveals great truth!