I lost touch with my best friend. I don't know how it happened. We met when we moved to a village in the Cotswolds and she lived there with her husband. We hit it off right away and we had the most fabulous times together. Dawn and Frank moved out of the village after a few years but we stayed in touch for a while and then, sadly, it all sort of slid away. I'm not sure either of us fully know why we lost touch but as with all people who lose touch, time seems to move on and it feels harder and harder to actually make contact again. I missed having Dawn around to chat to when I got my diagnosis mainly because I knew she wouldn't let me down like other people had. The fact is that she never let me down, ever.
It was me who finally got in touch. I didn't even know if she would have the same phone number or if I still had it on my phone because with new phones and bad backups I'd lost a lot of stuff.
There was actually no way I could NOT have contacted her. While we were still texting each other, Dawn and Frank's grandson, Sam, got a brain tumour. It was shocking. He was only about 18 months old. I don't know how they coped with the shock of it all. I still don't know how they coped. When we lost touch I often wondered how Sam was doing. He had been doing well, but I knew the long term diagnosis wasn't great and I worried about them all from time to time.
I was on Facebook one day when it came up with 'people you might know' and one of those people was Dawn's daughter. I clicked in to see if I could find anything out about Sam and with only a little bit of scrolling I was stopped in my tracks. Sam had lost his battle in October the previous year. 3 months ago in fact. I was so upset. I spoke to Mark about it and he said I had to contact Dawn. I felt awkward, I didn't know if she would even want to speak to me after the long gap. For a few hours I couldn't get it off my mind. We were out in the car talking about Dawn and Frank and wondering just how awful things must be for them. I decided to text her. I found a number which I hoped would still be in use and I sent the text.
About half an hour later a text came back. Dawn told me what had happened, how Sam had been abroad for Proton Therapy, how they had raised £90,000 for him to go. The whole thing was so heartbreaking. It changed Dawn and Frank's life that's for sure. The biggest thing in all of this was that, I still loved my lovely friend. My heart broke for her and it didn't feel that we had lost touch at all. She sent lots of photos of beautiful Sam. He was gorgeous with or without hair. Over the next days we exchanged lots of texts and I caught up on all of Sam's short life. I cried all the time. Every text was painful. They had all been through so much, every type of hell imaginable. Sam had done very well after Proton Therapy. He actually went back to school and had a fairly normal life for 2 years and I have no doubt that his family hoped that it would last and he would continue to do well..but cancer being the bastard that it is came back. There can be no crueler cancer than one that takes a child. The pain of losing that beautiful boy will last forever. We talk about him often, Dawn and I. Mark and I talk about him too. He is our friend's grandson and he will always be a part of our lives.
So my tests this year took a very different turn because I had the support of Dawn. She text me the morning of my MRI and said I'm with you every step today. She told me to think of Sam having to go through the MRI scanner and said, if he can do it so can you. I had not been able to go through the first MRI the previous year and the second one I had to do on my belly so I didn't feel so claustrophobic. I was expecting this MRI to be the same (on my belly) but no.. when I got there they said they couldn't do it that way and I had to go through on my front. It freaked me out a bit but I thought of Dawn's words and I thought of Sam.. and between them, Sam and Dawn got me through the machine that day.
She hasn't let me down. I knew she wouldn't. She doesn't care if I moan about things, she moans with me. It's a proper friendship where we can say what we like, be annoyed about people, be happy, be sad, be angry. We love a gossip, what sort of friends would we be if we didn't! It doesn't matter what I say to Dawn, she has always got my back and I have always and forever got hers. Real friends do not come along very often in life, sometimes not at all so I cherish what I have. I'll never lose touch again.
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