"Close the door," she whispered conspiratorially to my other new coworker who had just complimented her on her fabulousness that day. Apparently this was part of some ongoing conversation to which I was not privy having only worked there a few weeks. She said something to me, which escapes me now, to the effect of wondering if I would be bothered by what she was about to do, without telling me what she was about to do. I had only been working with these two for perhaps a month. I knew one a little better than the other because our work paths had already crossed. I was in an office that had previously been used to store the flotsam and jetsam of office life in corporate America and it had not really been turned back into an office before I arrived on the scene. People had a way of remarking that it looked like I wasn't settled in. But since the administrative assistant- you know, the person in the office who actually knows how to get things done- had quit the same week I arrived, there was no one to ensure I was properly "set up". And I had so many other things to concern myself with like learning a new industry from the baseline so I could start writing about it like, the second week I arrived. Furniture and tables stacked against the wall, a lack of a filing cabinet or bookshelves, bulletin boards on the floor... all these things seemed trivial compared to the learning I had to do. So, here we were. Three women in a room half office and half storage closet with the door closed. Me sitting behind my 1980s desk... and two close friends who just happened to find themselves having a conversation in my office. They could've been anywhere. As soon as the door was closed, she lifted up her shirt and said to her friend who had closed the door, "It's all thanks for my new bra." She stood there in a skirt with her blouse pulled up to expose the new bra. Her friend laughed. And I laughed. This was the first time I really met Hollie. That was a year ago. Tonight, my friend, Hollie, is lying in a hospital bed, medicated heavily, her oxygen removed in order to allow her to slip from this world into the next. Hollie will die tonight. The planet turned tonight to reveal the last sunset that will occur while she lingers still in her body. By the time the earth rotates round again, causing the illusion of sunrise, she will be gone back to the All from which we come. She has a cancer. A rare cancer that returned more vindicatively than the first time it made its appearance on the scene leading to the removal of one of her lungs. It isn't lung cancer... but that was where it happened to make itself at home. This happened before I came to work there... much before. The Hollie I knew had a full head of hair and was well. If she hadn't told me stories.... funny, weird stories that only the person who has had a disease can tell about it... I would never have known. I wouldn't have ever guessed this vibrant, alive person had already faced her mortality once. She told me how her sense of balance was off for some time after her lung was removed. You don't think about such things... but imagine having so much of your innards removed. And she said, that since your body doesn't want empty space in there, her chest slowly filled with fluid- which was normal and to be expected. But here's how Hollie told the story, "I used to slosh. It was soooo embarassing. I'd get up and the fluid sloshed inside of me until the cavity finally filled. Geez. And you could sort of hear it." Then she would laugh. And her remaining lung shifted to the center of her chest... making the tests she underwent to ensure the cancer was still gone... a little trickier to conduct because her organs weren't in normal places any more. She talked about how she had to build up her endurance because when you just have one lung, "You can't run up and down the stairs any more!" And though it sounds so serious, but she conveyed these stories like the telling of an old joke, "A funny thing happened on the way to the office today.." She loved to play practical jokes, travel, her dog, her husband, her friends. She was sarcastic and was known to stir up a little commotion rather than let a thing lie. She had no problem with steering clear of fight or making nice. If something was not the way she thought it should be, she was going to let someone know about it. It was a source of much humor among her coworkers/friends of the past decade. And so it went. Hollie has a sharp wit and biting humor. She was no saint and she was hilarious. She was good at her job. She was liked by those she respected and was well-respected by everyone I met in my short time there. But last fall the cancer returned... and by February, she resigned and took early retirement. Now, she lay in a bed somewhere in this town, her husband by her side, slowly slipping the gravity of this earth. She is three years younger than me. So, tonight, I wish her peace on her way onto the next adventure. It's been a hard couple of weeks here on planet earth. But also a time to appreciate the wonder of the time we have on this fleeting journey as our feet pass over the orb. Day in. Day out. Hour by hour. Minute by minute. Each a chance to reach out, a chance to truly notice, a chance to breathe in this amazing life. A chance to love and be loved. So easy to take for granted. So easy to let a day slip away because we're in a "bad mood." Huh. Bad mood. Whatever, yeah? Sleep well, my friend. Your time here may be done but there's so much ahead for you and your sharp tongued, black bra exposing, stirrin' it up, self. I look forward to your handiwork reflected in the Universe. As for me, I'm going to take a better look around tomorrow morning when I walk outside on my way to work. And I will smile and think of you. ---------- For RHS