My Journey with Farrah - Alana Stewart [5]
Tina and I are going to see her tomorrow and I asked her what I could bring. “Your minestrone soup,” she said. So when we hung up, I drove to Whole Foods to get the vegetables for her favorite soup.
I used to have this belief that people who were famous or bigger than life were immune from these kind of things, but I’ve watched too many people who I thought were invincible, who seemingly had it all, experience life’s hardships and tragedies just like everyone else. No one is immune from life, not even an icon like Farrah, the golden girl of the seventies. Any one of us can get a phone call that changes our life in a flash. So many things can happen, to anyone, any time. Just writing about it I feel frozen with fear. I want some guarantee from God, from the universe, that Farrah will be okay, that I’ll be safe, that the people I love will be safe. But there are no guarantees.
My friend Lesley says we have to stay in the present, live every moment fully and enjoy it, and surrender the future to God. But focusing on the here and now is hard to do at times. I feel like I have to wear a helmet and live in a crash position for fear of life’s next blow. That’s how I’ve been going through life, constantly anxious about what’s coming next, what unforeseen struggle will make things difficult all over again. Sometimes I want to go back and live at the clinic in Germany—I felt so safe there. But then I remind myself, that’s where I found out about Farrah’s cancer. Even the comfort of that place has been tainted by the power of uncertainty now.
God, help me here. I’m struggling with trying to understand all this. I want my friend to be okay. I don’t want to see her go through this painful experience and yet I can’t stop it, just like I can’t prevent my children from suffering. I don’t know the answer, God. Maybe I just have to surrender it to you and trust that she will be okay, that my kids are safe and protected, that I am as well. Let me feel your loving presence, God, wherever you are, whatever you are.
Thank you, God.
Amen
October 12, 2006
Tina and I went to see Farrah yesterday afternoon. I made the minestrone soup and her favorite ginger cookies, and Tina brought her a giant, I mean giant, teddy bear. It was bigger than both of us. It barely fit into my car. Tina Sinatra is one of my oldest and very best friends and the godmother of my children. I don’t remember exactly when she and Farrah met, but we all became very close, the three of us, almost instantly. She was devastated when she heard about Farrah’s cancer. Her other very close friend Suzanne Pleshette was battling lung cancer, as well as our mutual friend Freddie Fields. She had already experienced firsthand the ravages of cancer. And now Farrah, too…
When we arrived at Farrah’s apartment, Tina and I went into her bedroom with the bear and waited for her to come out of the bathroom. When she walked out, we couldn’t believe it. She looked radiant, a vision all in pink. Her skin was glowing and her hair fell in soft waves around her face. You wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong with her if it weren’t for the IV coming out of her arm and the attached chemo pack, which administers the chemo twenty-four hours a day.
Farrah was so happy we came. We ended up having a lot of laughs, all piled on the bed with that gigantic bear. We took silly pictures and gobbled up the ginger cookies…and then, of course, we finally got around to the elephant in the room. She told us in great detail about her cancer treatment. I tried to smile, to put on a stoic face, to act normal, but I still couldn’t quite believe that my best friend had cancer. I just wanted to make it all go away for her; the pain, the discomfort, the fear she must be feeling. She’s strong, but I know she has to be scared. If it were me, I would never be this brave. I’d be out of my mind with