Living to 102

It's 7:30 in the a.m. and the phone rings. It's my back east friend, Pat. We call each other every week on Tuesdays at 7:30 a.m. PST, 10:30 EST to discuss our past week. We got on to the subject of Dolores Hope's death and the fact she was one hundred and two when she died. Our usual weekly conversations are like the Jerry Seinfeld show—about nothing: what we’d be cooking that night, our aches, pains, her Italian classes, our card group, company, our kids and so on. Nothing of much importance--but sharing all this weekly gives our friendship continuity.Now we were on mortality, serious stuff--death.

“Lordy,” I gasped, “I don’t want to last for one hundred and two years, do you?”
She hesitated, “Maybe.”
"Really?" I said, "So you want your daughter wiping your chin and other unmentionable areas? Telling you when to get up, what to eat, and just generally bossing you around? Think about it!"
"I'm thinking," she said.

Pat and I, Mary, Barbara and Peg all met in our late 20's at a  neighborhood Tupperware party sometime in the early 60's, and have been friends for fifty years. As young, stay at home moms, we did everything together from coffee klatches to baby sitting, to holiday parties to shopping. Over the years we have put We hung out together, our club house the kitchen where we slurped coffee together with small kids hanging onto our legs, then through those first days of school, finally the angst of teen years, graduations, marriages, and now grandchildren. Like sisters, the bond was forged.  Now we are elderly and, even though distance separates us, we’ve never lost touch.


We  have occasional sisterly-like falling outs, but we've never fallen far enough to lose touch. Even with the moves--Mary and Pat moved further east on Long Island, and Peg and I moved to California, leaving Barbara, the "baby", all alone in the old neighborhood. The sisterhood bond we've formed is unconditional. A connection no amount of friction, years or miles can sever. 

About two years ago I received a frantic telephone call from Mary, on Long Island, to tell me that she'd heard that Barbara died. She'd panicked and called Pat. "Call her house," Pat, the sensible older "sister" advised. She did. When Barbara answered the phone Mary was taken aback. "Barbara, why are you answering the phone? You're dead!"

We all had a good laugh over that but the thought of one of us dying shook us all up. Our mortality became a reality.

Now Dolores Hope has died and Pat thinks she wants to live to be 102. We've done a lot together but I'm thinking--not this. "You'll be on your own," I told her. "No more Mary, Peg or Barbara. No more Tuesday telephone calls."

Next Tuesday when we talk, I must remember to ask her if she still wants to go it alone