Losing Cathy

I lost Cathy twice; the most recent time was about twenty years ago, and it still causes me immense sadness. I’m not sure what year it was; I know I was still living in New York, and it was Memorial Day weekend. I called her at her house on Fire Island on Saturday morning. “Carol?” she asked when she picked up the phone. ”No, it’s Nancy.” She was waiting for our mutual friend Carol to arrive on the ferry, for the weekend, she couldn’t talk, but would call me over the weekend. She never called.

I called her numerous times over the following months, and continued to send her birthday and holiday cards for many years, but I never heard from her. We didn’t have a fight, or disagreement that I was aware of. I had no idea what I’d done, or how to fix it. She was clearly done with me, and the hurt has lingered more than with any of my romantic break-ups. Cathy and I had been friends since junior high, and our friendship had weathered many storms, including a prior rift that lasted a few years and was the first time I lost her.

After that first falling out Cathy and I managed to salvage our relationship and reset our friendship. I can’t recall which one of us sent the first letter, but after a few were exchanged she invited me to Fire Island early one spring, and we spent two days hashing out what had happened and why she’d shut me out. It felt like we’d both recognized how important our friendship was to us. After that I was careful with it, with her. It lasted a few years.

Several years ago I went to a reunion of sorts held at a friend’s house in the town we’d all grown up in. Laura’s mother had sold their house and was moving to Philadelphia, so this would be a farewell party for the home Laura had grown up in, as well as a celebration of all of us turning fifty. Our entire high school social circle was invited. Someone put a book together with then and now photos, and all current info. Cathy was invited, but she didn’t attend so she wasn’t included in the book. The aforementioned Carol was there. She and Cathy were still friends.

The three of us had been close friends and it was particularly painful to me that it was Carol that Cathy remained friends with. It took me most of the evening to ask about Cathy, and when I did Carol wasn’t particularly forthcoming with information. Cathy and her husband had split up; she was a teacher, and still living in the same place outside NYC. Carol hinted at what might have caused her to end our friendship, but it didn’t make sense to me and I didn’t push the issue.

I still think of Cathy, though not often, and I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach when last week Face Book suggested I might know her. I froze as if she could see me or would know this had shown up on my feed. Once I started breathing/thinking again it occurred to me she might be seeing the same suggestion. What would she do if that happened? Would she friend request me? Could I, should I friend request her?  All I know is that I couldn’t bear another rejection from someone who meant so much to me. I continue to ignore the prompt each time it reappears.

Like my friend Bonnie, I harbor fantasies of a mutual friend seeing this post and sharing it with her. What would she think? Does she ever think of me with sadness or regret? Maybe she is still angry or upset for whatever it is that I did. Maybe she can barely remember me, though that seems unlikely. I have lost so many friends over my lifetime, for many reasons. I have ended toxic friendships, and possibly those people wonder what became of me, or why I ended things, but I expect they replaced me with new receptacles for their particular brand of angst/neediness/addiction or whatever.

As I write this it occurs to me, perhaps I was that toxic friend Cathy needed to evict form her life.