My dear friend and college roommate died this morning. Her name was Melinda, and she was 36. She had inflammatory breast cancer, and she fought so hard. Ironically, she was an oncologist in Chicago. She also was a brilliant woman and a loving friend. I would like people to know about her. I would like to hear her voice again. She always called me, and other people she cared about, “buddy.” Her own nickname back in those days, before she changed her last name, was “M.D.”
She was thoroughly absentminded and scattered, which drove me crazy, and I was a completely anal neat freak, which drove her crazy. Her room was a jumble of clothes and shoes and books and papers, piled so high that it was hard to find the path to her bed. She often left her coffeepot or curling iron on when she departed our E. College Street apartment in the mornings–once, I even came home and found that she’d forgotten to turn off the water in the bathroom faucet. She and her boyfriend, Daniel, loved to cook gourmet food and linger over long meals in the evening, and they introduced me to pesto and risotto, which I’d never had before. She liked knitting and listening to NPR. She read The New York Times. At night, she’d sit in my room, on my small twin bed, and we’d talk about feminism, and women authors, and our families. We’d bitch about our boyfriends. We’d laugh. Sometimes we fought, but we never stayed angry for long.
After college and graduate school, we ebbed and flowed, sometimes talking several times a year and sometimes not talking at all. Melinda met Ava, on a brief visit through Iowa City, but she never met Mark. No matter how long it had been since Melinda and I had last talked, it was just like old times when we reconnected. She knew me, and I knew her–and that was that.
She was a big sister. A daughter. A friend. A wife.
She lived in Chicago and had been married to Steve for three years; they just celebrated their third anniversary in September. She was newly pregnant when they found the aggressive cancer two years ago, and she had to terminate the pregnancy to begin immediate chemotherapy. She did experimental stem-cell-replacement therapy at NIH and fought the cancer off the first time. She did it with endless courage and dignity, though I know she was angry and sad and afraid. I never knew what to say, and I think I often said the wrong thing. I felt helpless in the face of her pain, and I fumbled for the right words–sending care packages that I hoped would say what I couldn’t.
For a short while, Melinda had her life back and was offered her own research lab at the University of Portland. Last spring, as she was about to leave on a househunting trip in Oregon, she discovered that the “the beast,” as she called it, had come back–and it devoured her quickly. This morning, I opened my e-mail and found a note from her husband, Steve, that said, “Our dearest Melinda died early this morning. Words cannot express our grief at our loss.”
There are no words. I’ll miss you so much, buddy.