Judy

As I begin to write this, I’m at work. I just got off the phone with Sarah. Judy Lefaive died. She was the mother of one of Sarah and my oldest friends. One of the solitary friends we still have who could truly and unequivocally be described as ours. I met Sarah on Pearl Harbor Day in 1996. I met Scott about a week later. Sarah knew him already, but my relationship with him and my relationship with Sarah began almost simultaneously. We graduated from high school together. We went to college together. For a brief period we all lived together. Scott could have been the Best Man at our wedding. He could have been the Maid of Honor. We’ve seen each other infrequently over the years since Sarah and I moved to New York in 2002. But we are still friends. Absence aside, we’re still dear friends, I think.

Scott’s mom was a lovely person, who clearly loved her husband and her two children undyingly. And they all loved her. I won’t go into the specifics of her illness or her passing. And while I was fortunate enough to be her presence last week, as I try to absorb this expected news, I will prefer to think of the next to last time I saw her. It was December 2006. Sarah and I had been in Greensboro to spend Christmas with her family and to show our infant son off to anyone we could. Even though Scott was in Charlotte, Sarah insisted that we bring Nate to meet his parents, so we drove to their house, and we had a nice visit with the two of them. It was brief. But today, it feels somehow important that we were there.

In the end, you never know how people feel about you. I can be bristly. In the early days of my friendship with Scott, I could be exceedingly so, at times. I don’t know how Judy felt about me. I think she liked me. I know she liked Sarah. For us, she and Mike, and Niki, and Scott were like family to Sarah and me. They’ve gone through a long and difficult period to get to today, the start of another long and difficult period. My thoughts are with them. And with Judy.