Kindred Spirits - Hardcover

KINDRED SPIRITS: An Ode to My Friend, Trish.(Originally entitled, "Middle-Aged Friendship Takes Guts" as published in THE LIPSTICK CHRONICLES on July 5, 2011.)
My mother used to spout a Pennsylvania Dutch expression that, loosely translated, meant if you got to adulthood and could count your true friends on one hand you were lucky.To me, then a gregarious teenager, this was another one of those PA Dutch downer phrases like, "Cooking Lasts. Kissing Don't." It made no sense. I had tons of friends, enough in our neighborhood for one hand alone! What was my mother talking about?Of course, now that I'm in my late forties, I know EXACTLY what she was talking about. I have friends, sure, people I know from work or from my husband's work, girls around town. But true friends...ahh, that's a different story.A true friend is your loyal ally, no questions asked. That's not to say she's not going to grill you later or tell you that you're crazy - because that's also what true friends do. But in the moment when you need her to come over/take you to the hospital/let you spend the night, the true friend is your go-to person. Explanation not required.KINDRED SPIRITS, my latest novel, explores this phenomenon. (Yes, this is BSP - but I haven't BSP'd in over a year! Please stick with me.)In the story, three women who became friends when they were young mothers and couldn't take the one upsmanship of the PTA clique, reunite after their children have grown and after their mutual friend has died. She's left for them an assignment based on a secret too disruptive to have shared with her husband and sons. And, so, they go on a road trip to fulfill her last wish - and to find themselves.Okay, so it's not the most original premise in the world. Road trip books and movies (calling THELMA AND LOUISE) are old hat. That's not to say, however, that just because the structure is the same so is the story. I learned more from writing KINDRED SPIRITS than I have from any other book and, not to get too woowoo on you, it was almost as if my purpose for writing it was not the book itself, but the process of doing so.Two crises socked me broadside while I was writing KINDRED SPIRITS. The first was that my father fell ill and died. The second was that my next door neighbor and friend, the muse for KINDRED SPIRITS, rapidly lost her struggle against cancer.Because KINDRED SPIRITS begins with a woman dying, I never told Trish it was about her, but she knew. And she would crack jokes like, "you can use this in your book," during surreal interruptions from writing when I would have to drop everything to rush her to the hospital.Once, while I was at a particularly good part of the book, my concentration was interrupted by the blast of the phone. Trish. Again. Gritting my teeth, I put on my cheerful voice as I quickly took notes trying to remember what it was I'd been trying to write."I can't work the fax and I've been over and over and I called Philadelphia and they said I've got to get it in by four Boston can't  by maybe L.A. can. Can you believe not Boston? Can I borrow your fax?'I checked the date. Three days after her last chemo session. Those were always the worst."How long have you been throwing up?" I said."Since midnight yesterday. I'm okay. I'm not going back to that hospital. That's not why I'm calling. Can I use your fax?""Sure. I'll fax it for you." Trish's husband was in California for work and if my calculations were correct, she hadn't managed to keep down any fluid in over 24 hours. The way she was talking, it was clear she was dehydrated. "Then I'm going to pick you up and take you to CVH.""No.""Okay," I lied.A half hour later, Trish was in my car, not joking this time, barely able to sit. We dropped off her daughter at an after-school lesson and then I drove Trish to the hospital where I talked the nurses into finding a room for and hooking her up to IV fluids. They insisted on taking her blood first."I don't have any blood to take." Trish collapsed on the bed. "You'll see."She was right. They couldn't even find a vein.We waited unnecessarily. An hour or so went by as I frequently badgered the nurses station. Finally, someone on the ball got with it and hooked her up. Watching her return to life reminded me of the monarch butterfly I'd once captured coming out of its cocoon and inflating its wings."I'm dying, you know," she said after they hooked her up to IV bag #2. This was big for Triish, a feisty Irish fighter, a clinical child psychologist who took on the toughest kids at the toughest local public school. "Never surrender!" had been her motto for six years.I studied the linoleum floor, tears springing to my eyes. "Don't say that.""I have to say that because this is what death looks like and you have to see. We all die, you know. You'll die, too. We just have to face facts."Being Trish, though, she denied this the next morning. It was all a blip. A mere bump in the road. She was going to kick this thing. That fax I sent? It went to a radical program where this new drug would cure her cancer. She'd been admitted. She was in! Surely, a cure was imminent.On December 22nd, months later, Trish invited the book group to her house for one last meeting. After they left, she hooked herself up to her first dose of morphine, the pain having become too much for her fragile body to continue bearing. She did not wake the next morning and on December 24th, her husband by her side, she quietly slipped away.

Sarah Strohmeyer is the bestselling author of Sweet Love, The Cinderella Pact, The Sleeping Beauty Proposal, The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives, and the popular "Bubbles" series. She lives with her family outside Montpelier, Vermont.