This past weekend, I welcomed Casey and Mary to my front porch. We hugged and scanned each other with our usual chorus of, “Dang, girl. You look good.”
Still, our hearts were all a little battered. We had all said goodbye to Bernie in the spring. Physically, we were also compromised. Mary had just undergone a major surgery. Casey was consulting with her own surgeon on breast reconstruction after her double mastectomy. I was struggling with prolonged insomnia; I had lost sleep, weight and hair after also losing Bernie.
Nevertheless, we put on our mascara and boarded an Uber to a bar downtown. There, the bartender provided generous pours. A cranberry vodka for Mary. A pineapple vodka for Casey. A dirty martini for me. Three vessels as different as the women who held them.
We raised a collective cheers: “To freedom.”
Only six months prior, we had discovered each other in a way Bernie never expected. Our suspicions had been rumbling for months, however.
