Sarah

We met dancing, but didn’t properly meet until she friended me on Facebook. We called her ‘Vege’ in dance class, because she was from Australia and thus liked Vegemite. I didn’t know her real name until that fateful friend invitation from Sarah Catherine Foster. Who is Sarah Catherine Foster? I wondered. What a treat it was to find out.

She said she sought me out on social media because she admired my wit in Saturday morning contemporary class. Love at first compliment. Our early escapades included seeing a comedy show and a dance performance. At the dance performance, an usher at the theatre chatted her up and ended up asking for her phone number. I just thought that made so much sense, that someone would be charmed by her in such a short time. She had so much charm.

There is nothing that I like better in life than laugh-crying, and I have never so easily and frequently laugh-cried with anyone like I did with Sarah. Often we were both laughing at her, as she truly had the best ability to laugh at herself. I remember a dinner conversation about an incredibly difficult experience she had recently had, that was followed seconds later by both of us laugh-crying at the way she had chosen to rest her food awkwardly in her utensil on her plate.

There was a lot that Sarah and I had in common, like our love for dance and comedy, and the fact that we had both trained to be speech-language pathologists. We would send each other links to podcasts and find the other had already listened and loved them. We had the same type of wallet. Then, all of a sudden, in September 2018, about nine months after she had moved back to Australia and we were well into a long distance friendship, we both had cancer.

The randomness of cancer is cruel and unjust. My surgical oncologist called my stage 1 breast cancer ‘a hassle, but not life-threatening’. A lumpectomy, a month of radiation and five years of taking a daily dose of Tamoxifen. A very low risk of recurrence, a very high chance of survival. Sarah was not so lucky. Her treatments were brutal, the stage 4 bowel cancer statistics even more so, but for as long as she had treatment options she endured them with a self-professed almighty grit. She once told me a story about how it was her grit that got her through a terrible summer job of fruit processing. I wish I could remember more details from that story now, but alas.

When my treatment ended and hers was really just getting started, I had the most exquisite, grand fortune to find myself on an airplane to Melbourne for a visit. She and her fiancée were truly the best hosts to me, while also straddling the cancer life that was becoming their ever-changing new normal. What a gift it was to spend that time with her. To just be with her, on the coast, in the city, at her chemotherapy infusion. How difficult it was to leave. When I returned home, I felt bereft with the high likelihood that we would not know another time where we would be in each others’ physical company. There were many random times that I just burst into tears. I suppose that is when I started grieving.

It was a year and a half later, not long after her 36th birthday, mere days ago now, that she was gone. Though I felt her loss months earlier than this, with less contact from her, fewer messages and social media posts. The messages I did receive contained rather dire reports of her loss of treatment options and increasing pain and discomfort. All I could offer were futile words via a screen… I am so sorry that you are suffering. A happenstance social media sighting of a photo of her getting married prompted a question from me and a beautiful last message from her describing the incredible lengths that her place of care had gone to to provide her and her fiancée with a wedding. My last message to her was simply that I missed her.

One of the best things about Sarah was the way she would get curious about every person she encountered and listen deeply to their story. She wanted to know more about my journey into mindfulness practice and I shared one of my favourite exercises with her – looking up. We sent pictures to one another of what we saw above us in our daily life, reminders to keep appreciating the ordinary loveliness that is sometimes just a glance away.

She found humour and beauty in everything. Even incurable bowel cancer. She was such a joy to be friends with for the short, precious time that I had with her. This is what she infused into me, and it is in her memory that I vow every day to take not a single thing for granted. Because, beyond reason, cancer was merciful to me (thus far), and I get to keep getting curious, keep noticing, keep listening, keep appreciating, keep living life, while she does not.

Thank you Sarah, I will think of you every time I look up.