Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Dream sequence
This morning I woke up from a dream so vivid that I was surprised to find myself still in bed. I rarely remember my dreams. This one I can’t shake off because the subject matter is about a real life mystery I haven’t been able to solve. It concerns a friendship that was once long and deep and is no more.
I met my friend when I was a student nurse and she was the head nurse on the psychiatric unit. After graduation I took a job as the evening nurse on this same division, the locked psychiatric floor. I worked for her and came to respect her ethics and her management style. After three years as her evening nurse I moved to a different position in the hospital and that is when our friendship began to flourish.
For the next two decades we became fast friends. We traveled together, we partied, we went on float trips, and we shared the challenges of nursing management. Even after I left Deaconess for another hospital we remained close. When my daughter was born we gave her my friend’s name as Jackie’s middle name. When she married the love of her life I sang at her wedding. We even joined Weight Watchers periodically and were each other’s cheerleader. That’s a bond that is forever…
Forever didn’t happen. The last time I saw my friend was at the commitment ceremony that Jan and I had in 2006. She came, but she was quiet and reserved and she declined the invitation to go to dinner with several of us. I didn’t think much of that because I was caught up in the joy of the occasion.
In my dream this morning I was at a function with several of the people that I knew when I worked with her. I was walking toward a meeting room and encountered her talking to one of the doctors. She looked shocked to see me and she turned away as if to stop any effort on my part to greet her. I went into the meeting room and the only seat was a couple of chairs removed from her. The person I sat with noticed the proximity and commented that my friend was “glowing pink” and looking quite disturbed. Suddenly she got up and left the room. My companion asked me what that was about and, before I could answer, I woke up.
When Jan and I moved back to St. Louis after a nine year absence I dialed my friend’s number, which I still have in my memory bank. There was no answer so I left a message asking for a call back if she was so inclined. There has been no response. I sent her a card with a similar message and nothing has come of it.
I don’t know what happened to fracture this friendship. If I knew, I would try to make things right between us. I have thought a lot about it and mourned the loss of the relationship. Someone once reminded me that people come to us and sometimes go from us when the energy of a relationship wanes. Interests change. Circumstances come between people. Sometimes there is a deep hurt that cancels any fondness that once existed. This is the one that worries me, that in some way I caused her some pain. I will never know for sure, and that makes me really sad.