My Journey with Farrah - Alana Stewart [3]
I also found a greater calling in this experience, and through it learned some invaluable life lessons. One of the most important is the basic foundation of all spiritual teachings: the power of giving. When you unselfishly do something for someone else, when you get beyond yourself, out of your head, and out of your own way, God solves your problems for you. Many people ask me how I could have put my life on hold for three years to be with Farrah all that time. I don’t see it as a sacrifice. I see it as simply being there for my friend, and it’s ended up being a blessing and a gift for me. Farrah had been an inspiration to so many people, not just those who have cancer but people in other challenging situations. The letters of gratitude poured in by the thousands every week. I feel privileged to have been part of all this. I am a different person, a better person, because of it. As sad and painful as the journey was, it gave me a new perspective on who I am and what is really important in life. And this perspective has turned my life around in ways I could never have envisioned.
I have kept journals since I was nine years old, and I would sometimes read Farrah what I had written in them. She loved my writing. “You’re such a good writer,” she’d say encouragingly. “You must keep doing this.” I did. I would diligently pour out my feelings, fears, and frustrations in my journal, and I soon realized how much the most recent volumes, just like my life these past three years, were about Farrah and her courageous battle with cancer. Paging through the frantically scribbled entries—some written in the wee hours of the morning when I was too stressed to sleep—I found that book which Farrah had suggested about two friends and their journey together. I suspect Farrah knew it was in there all along.
What follows is my journal of these past three years—what I saw, what I felt, what I was going through with Farrah, and how it was affecting my own life. Sometimes I wrote every day. Other times life was too hectic and the weeks flew by without my writing. But put them all together, and what you have is a celebration of our friendship as much as it is a chronicle of cancer treatment. Our relationship grew and deepened because of this experience we went through together. It was the bright spot in the midst of all the darkness. I don’t know what my life will be like without Farrah in it. I can’t imagine it. I can’t go there. But I do know I won’t have anyone to make pecan pies with me on Christmas. What I do have, and what I want to share, is the memory of a friendship of thirty years—and this, the greatest and the last adventure that we went on together.
A happier time.
This was Farrah’s favorite picture of us. She kept it in a frame by her bedside, as I do. She liked the way we look in it…suntanned and rested. It was such a quiet, peaceful trip. We were able to get away from the world and lie in the sun. It was New Year’s Eve and everyone else went out, but we stayed in and celebrated with each other…and the cook. I made this drink that turned out to be our favorite, a Yellowbird: it was coconut rum and pineapple juice. We had that in lieu of champagne. At midnight we toasted each other. Just looking at this photo evokes such happy memories: two best friends toasting each other, our friendship, and the promise of what a new year would bring. It’s how I like to think of Farrah: happy, healthy, hopeful. It was before all of this