Four Girls and a Bar of Chocolate

** This post is dedicated to  strong, resilient, brave friends  all over the world  who are living  with serious illness:  patients  and  caregivers. **

Here we sit, four of us in Edgar’s in Manhattan on a Saturday night. We’ve all gathered for the weekend for M’s son’s Bar Mitzvah and it is obviously time to eat again. Four of us in our forties, each dealing with medical issues of our own, or our family’s, are at crossroads in our lives.

There is much to discuss.
Two of us are breast cancer survivors, one is going through her 3rd course of chemo in 20 years, one has multiple sclerosis and one has a husband recovering from brain surgery. One is job hunting, three have given up jobs due to family illness. You’d think it would be a depressing conversation. Three of us are originally from England and have known each other since childhood. One is Canadian and newer to us all but we feel we have known her since we were kids. We all have children, two have sick parents, two have lost our fathers and worry about our mothers. We are the sandwich generation.

But then we get out the chocolate and we begin to laugh. We laugh so much that our sides ache, our eyes are filled with tears and customers at the other tables are looking at us rather strangely. We laugh about very serious things, in a way you can only do if you have experienced them yourself and feel in safe company –breast reconstruction, job loss, brain MRIs, counselling, children affected by their parents’ illnesses. We predict each other’s answers and this only makes us giggle more. The chocolate is passed around and we take deep gulping breaths. We look at each other and shake our heads that we are here together, in a country none of us grew up in, celebrating in the midst of crisis, laughing with the future unknown and gaining strength that friendship, support, love, lots of belly aching  laughter and good English chocolate can make everything seem okay, at least for a moment.

* Please email me at gilly@bringingbooksofcomfort.org or leave a comment on this post. I'd love to have your feedback. 


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