Always ... it is morning ... when familiar church bells ... ring ...

We were seven ... when we met.  Second grade.  St. Ann’s ... Neponset ... Dorchester ...

She lived almost across the street from the church.  I lived at the parish’s far end.  One way and another we travelled through grammar school together ... have some of the same stories to tell.

In eighth grade ... when we were thirteen ... we chose the same high school ... St. Gregory’s ... at the edge of Lower Mills ... Dorchester ... Baker’s Chocolate Dorchester.

This time we weren’t parishioners.  We were outsiders who’d been let in.  Didn’t matter.  We were friends.  Stories from here ... oh yes ...

Now she walked up Ashmont St. ... the street I’d always walked down.  One block left turn ... on Adams St.  From here we walked on side by side.  To this day, she is the only one who can easily walk beside me.  I go inside my head and so weave and wobble ... as I go.  From the first she ... has gauged and woven ... wobbled back ... around ... through even.  We’ve never lost our way.  

She grew up in her grandmother’s house ... the house her mom had always ... has still ... always known.  She ... in time ... was one of ten ... more or less the middle ... of ten.  Six girls.  Four boys.  Her mom was always cooking something.  Her dad worked for the telephone company.  He wore a suit to work.

I, the only child, grew up on the middle floor of a Dorchester three-decker.  We had a front porch though we never sat on it ... and a back porch ... my outdoor space ... my place to swing ... and sing ... and see the moon ... to sense space ... of my own.  All my father’s family had lived together in this space.  My guess is that he was about sixteen when they moved here.  He ... and we ... were the last to leave.

My mother was a nurse.  She loved her work.  My father ... when I knew him ... worked down the street at the corner store.   I think he’d worked there even before he went to war.  He also loaded milk trucks ... in the dark of night.  Heavy, physical labour ... his.  He wore starched flannel shirts and often ... thermal underwear.

All from Dorchester ... St. Ann’s ... St. Peter’s ... Dorchester-Boston accents ... not all quite the same ... oddity but ... the way it was.

My friend and I intended to be Florence Nightingale and so spent fair bits of time talking with my mom.  We became Candy Stripers together ... always shared same volunteer shifts ... and so walked our walk together ... even in summer ... when we were free.

The hospital, Carney, Catholic, of course, was the closer side of Dorchester Park while St. Greg’s was just the other side.  Just over a mile to Carney.  A mile and a quarter to school.  Well ... from my house at least.  At Carney we came to know everyone on the Neuro floor where we weren’t afraid to be.  I think we learned most there.

Somehow she found paid work at the maternity hospital, St. Margaret’s, a bus ride or two away.  She had had a good deal of experience with babies growing up.  In time I stayed on at Carney ... filing at first ... in the Business Office.  We both worked all through school. Hospitals became part of our lives.

In grammar school we’d had some classes, years together.  In high school we shared every class for all four years.  Biology, chemistry, physics, math and math and math and math, Latin, French ... all the rest.  I loved the reading best of all and writing saved me ... always ... but it took a long time for me to hear ... that words ... would call my name.

She went to Regis and I went to Emmanuel.  Catholic women’s colleges ... working women’s colleges ... where tuition was low because ... the nuns ... had taken vows of poverty.  We knew a world led by women.  We always had.  We thought it was ... the way it was.  In the beginning we could start the ride together even on the Riverside trolley.  I’d get off at Fenway and she ... stayed on.

Money ... nonsense.  I was lucky enough with scholarships and then I was offered ... what were they then ... loans ... grants.  The scholarships covered everything.  I lived at home.  So did she ... but her father wore a suit to work and though there were ten children ... and she was the first to choose college ... he earned too much.  How ridiculously absurd.  By then she hoped to become a doctor and she would have been one of the best.  I wrote and asked if I could make my loan or grant over to her.  No one ever wrote back though it made perfect sense to me.

Academic scholarships ... she must have had them too.  We’d had the same classes for we’d had the same grades.  

We had dreams ... and we knew then what they were ... 

I listened to hers.  She listened to mine.  We believed ... in dreams ...

She studied.  She worked.  She stopped for a while.  I’ve not thought of this for a long time.  

Money ... nonsense.  Why.  She went back to Catherine Laboure School of Nursing ... Carney’s school ...  and earned her R.N. and associate's degree.  In time she finished her bachelor’s and then her master’s.  She helped run and later ran one of the earliest Neonatal Intensive Care Units for premature births.  St. Margaret’s.  She is so at home with those who need her most.

***

There it is ... really ... how many of us have needed her most ...  

How many of us ... are there ... for her ...

***

Last Tuesday morning ... I ached for her ... for her heart ... and all it feels ... all she feels ... if she can let herself ... feel ...

On the face of it, I appear to be here ... but as she aches ... as she has lost the one she loved ...  really ... I am there ... with her ...

Middle of ten.  One of one.  She doesn’t need to be anyone or anything for me.  She is part of me.  She is my friend.

When she rang to tell me of her husband’s death, I asked when it would be best for her ... for me to come.  Just to be with her ... and let her ... be ... let her feel ... what it is ... all it is ... she really feels.  Not now with everyone.  Later perhaps when no one is there.  

And so I wait ... and sit with her ... hold her ... from here.  Please let her lift the phone and ring ... even if only to remember ... someone who loves her ... is ... ready to come.  Perhaps we’ll walk ... a beach.  Everything is easier ... when we can see ... the sea ...

I keep thinking that when I last moved away ... from her house ... I made her husband promise ... that if she ever needed me ... he would not wait for her to ring ... that he would ring ... and let me know.  

Do you have a friend with whom you don’t need to make a start ... with whom the middle  is ... simply where ... you always are.  When she rang the other day ... she breathed ... and then she cried.  I spoke her name.  At first I thought it was her health.  She doesn’t speak of that very much ... but then ... I knew ... I just knew.  There was nothing anyone could do and so she brought him home.  Home with her ... and with their girls.  Now he’s gone ... and I ... wish I ... could lift her pain ... all their pain ... away ...

With both my parents she was there with me.  

Last Tuesday morning ... I was with her ... for the last moments at Mulry’s  Funeral Home.  It is right beside our grammar school ... then the convent ... the rectory ... the church.  How familiar it all is ... a lifetime worth of memories ... I knew every moment of the mass ... especially masses there ... with her ...

Last Tuesday morning ... I thought for a moment that the final procession would turn on Ashmont St.  But that would take them by my house.  No.  Neponset Ave ... by the street where she and he have lived ... where she and their two daughters still ... live ... to Gallivan Blvd., then right ... I could see that spot from my kitchen on her second floor ... cross Adams St. -  my part of Adams St.  A few roads more ... turn left ... the other part of Adams St. and then the driveway ... to Cedar Grove.  My parents ... and uncle ... are near the water there.  I don’t know where her husband lies now.  I will know ... soon enough ... but for now ... there is little of this cemetery ... that I ... that we ... do not ... know ...

Last Tuesday morning ... I knew ... the moments when she did not cry.  They were the moments when tears fell here.  It’s almost a ... choreography.  It’s always been ... like this.  For us.

Somehow in the oddest way ... always ... we two ... from Dorchester ... have held ... each other ...   even when we know ... that we ... can only be beside ... unable ... to lift ... whatever pain ... whatever grief ... the other feels ... away ...

We cry ... and then we smile ... and then ... somehow we always laugh ... somehow ... we find sun ...

From the first we have ... gauged and woven ... wobbled back ... around ... through even ... easily walked together.  We have never lost our way.