September 9, 2011 was a Friday. I was at my desk in the Fashion District, having just started a new job eight weeks prior. It was in a quiet corner of the office building on the 12th floor. My desk was still fairly undisturbed, not yet littered with files and my organization system still working because I was new. The team of people I worked with on my floor — four women and a man — didn’t know me well yet. I didn’t know them. It takes me much longer than 8 weeks to open up, to be fully myself, to let people in. I was still quieter; still listening more than talking. Still being the same I was when I was 16, entering a new room of people — not afraid to speak, comfortable speaking, in fact, but wanting to know the lay of the land before I laid myself on the line. It was quiet, the first Friday morning after the endless New York Summer and Labor Day weekend.
My phone rang at 9:23 am. It was Mike, one of my closest friends and husband to my best friend, Lauren. Describing Mike as my friend, or my best friend’s husband, doesn’t do these relationships justice, I realize every time I write it or explain it. He is family. He is the guy that I met in August of 1999, when we both briefly taught at the same private school in Brooklyn before each going on to law school. The very moment I saw him, I liked him and felt his quality soul. The very second I said hello – instantaneously, with no pause or doubt – I thought “I must introduce him to Lauren”. Lauren, who I had known since moving to NYC, thought it had felt like a whole lifetime, often mistaken for sisters from the very first day. Since that day in 1999, he and his calm steady demeanor, his unshakable voice, have been part of my life. Although for the two and a half years from March 2009 to September 9, 2011, I’d heard his voice shake. Not as often as someone else’s might have, but enough to break a heart. I had been planning on going to their apartment after work – his and Lauren’s — to see her. We were going to have Roberta’s pizza the previous Saturday, but I had to reschedule because my kids broke down and I couldn’t survive getting them down four flights of stairs and into a public arena and forcing Lauren to deal with the physically overwhelming chaos. We were going to go Sunday instead, but she texted me and said she had stomach issues and couldn’t go. I still have the text. “You know how it goes.” Immediately, I’d wished I could have found a way to go Saturday. Wished I had found a way to go Saturday. The overwhelmed feeling of having temperamental two year olds seemed incredibly insignificant. I had said, to myself, “Never do that again. Find a way.” Spend every moment you can with her.
So Mike called on Friday September 9th, 2011, just a few days later. Lauren and Mike had received bad news earlier in the week. There was nothing more to do. Every battle that could be fought against the tumors growing in her liver, her colon, her lymph nodes, her lungs, had been fought. The last treatment worked enough to get her a trip to Hawaii, to get her a summer with her husband. To get her a few extra days with her family. No, it wasn’t the treatment that gave her this. It was her. The treatment did some battles, but she did the big ones. She got out of bed when many wouldn’t. She walked and ran and talked when many would have rolled over. Would have accepted a defeat that she never, ever would. She battled the slow demise and wouldn’t let the demise settle in. She watched my son at the playground of Union Square and near NYU, where he saw the rocks in her tummy and asked what they were. And she explained them and found a way to make him laugh but understand. She did this when her strength should have been gone and her heart was more tortured than mine will ever be, no matter what lies ahead of me. So Mike knew I was coming, and I can’t remember if I called him first to say “Let me know if I can bring anything.” Orange juice, gatorade, a cookie. A sponge to wet Lauren’s mouth, a cushion for her seat. Food for him. Cleaning supplies. A cure for cancer. I can’t remember if he was calling me back, or just called me, I just know he called me at 9:23 am.
“Nik, you need to come over this morning. She is going quick, everything is changing by the minute. She’s almost not here anymore, it’s happening so fast.” He explained how he was at work yesterday, he had gone to work and she was normal. Her hair was barely there, and her eyelashes weighing down her big eyes on her gaunt face. But she was still Lauren. Planning a trip to Target. Needing to get cleaning supplies. And he came home and it was a little different, and then it was like a fast forward camera flying through the life of a flower. She was fading, for lack of a better phrase, because no phrase does it justice.
I hung up, I cried. I shut my office door to close out the four people who barely knew me, and cried some more. I kept crying and opened it and said I had to leave to go to Lauren’s, and they all understood. I didn’t have to say more. I think I took a cab the thirty blocks. I normally would have walked, to avoid my carsickness and to get fresh air, but even with the worst traffic this would have taken longer than a cab. Even just a second longer. And I just wanted to be there. For Lauren. For Mike. For her mom, for me.
I had seen Lauren throughout her battle with cancer. I had seen her on bad days, although probably not her worst days. On her worst days and weeks, I wrestled with the guilt that I felt over not being able to help, over having to parent the three babies that came my way right before and after her diagnosis. After she had to terminate the pregnancy that would have made her and Mike first time parents. I felt guilt for being overwhelmed with the lucky man’s blessing of colicky twins and a healthy older brother and all these babies needing me needing me tugging at me pulling at me pulling pulling pulling me needing me, needing me so much that on her worst days I couldn’t be the friend that I would have wanted to be. That I still want to be. That I envisioned being before I could even envision anyone in my life having cancer. But still, I saw her throughout this battle, on other days. And then I saw her on this day.
She was laying in a recliner that a generous small company to whom I had a business connection had donated. Her mom was there, of course, and Mike. I walked in, and I lost my breathe just a little. Before Lauren, there had really only been one person I was close with in my life that died. My Grandpa Ray. The last time I saw him was July 1994, right before I turned 21, when I flew to Colorado and he was battling the illnesses — all of them, whatever they were – that had been killing him for years. I knew it would be the last time I saw him. That there would be no more checker games, no more football bets. No more tuna sandwiches in his black lunch box wrapped in wax paper with a side of vanilla wafers. No one else that would call me “Motornose” to tease me. No more big smiles from a man with perfect greased back hair and rolled up jeans and a tucked in shirt each time I walked into the bungalow on Newton. No one that would love me quite as purely and fully and unconditionally and sweetly as a grandfather, as this grandpa, as my Grandpa. I knew I wouldn’t see him again. And I walked into bedroom and he was laying in his modest full-size bed, and he looked like the size of a child in a big king bed. He was so small, so frail. He was fading. And I just wanted to give him a kiss and breath life into him. I didn’t want my mouth to leave him until I knew he could breath, he could have my lungs. My liver. My health. “Nik, I’m so proud of you.” Did I say I love you? Did I say anything? I think I did. I’m not sure anymore. It all gets lost and shadowed by that feeling of wanting to give to him whatever was inside of me that made me healthy, whatever it was he didn’t have. I wanted to breathe for him, to keep him here for the world to have. For me to have, to keep my Grandpa. I didn’t want it to be the last time.
It was the same when I saw Lauren. Not the visual, not necessarily, though she was small and her eyelashes so long and thick and heavy. But the feeling. It hit me instantly, the two moments forever connected. A flood of feeling that I recognized from 18 years ago. I wanted to give her whatever my lungs my liver my colon all my cancer free cells, all cleared after small scrapes of abnormal cells came off my skin and my cervix and my right breast clean bills of health each time, and my heart that keeps beating and kept beating and my mouth that lets me drink water whenever I am thirsty and my stomach that will let me eat and eat and stop eating and eat again and my legs that keep running when i take them for granted and my lungs and brain and blood and everything inside me i need to breathe to talk to love to see. I wanted to take this all out of me and give it to her because I didn’t want to lose her. I didn’t want her mom or Mike to lose her. I didn’t want the world to lose and I wanted to keep my friend Lauren. I didn’t want it to be the last time.
She turned to me and said “Nik, I’m so glad you are here. I thought you had to work.” I had left work a lot to come see her, but I wish I would have left more often. Because of Mike’s generosity, and her mom’s, I got to hold her hand that day. I got to let her rest her head on my shoulder. I got to talk to talk to her. I got to talk to Mike, and share stories that hopefully were good ones in her head. I got to be the friend that I wanted to be since the day I met her, when the road I saw in front of us was small apartments and cute boys and boxing classes and runs and long runs and fiances and husbands and kids and surprise parties and co-birthday dinners the first weekend of every October and spending too much money on highlights to stay blond and group trips and career accomplishments and struggling through New York City in our 20s to relish it in our 30s and good food and laughter and having our kids understand how much “my friend” meant when describing each other and have her be the person my kids went to when they couldn’t talk to me and have her kids come to me. I got to be the friend I wanted to be since her sister called me on a Saturday in March 2009 and told Derek and I “Lauren has cancer.” And I said “Lauren who?” Not knowing another Lauren, but certainly knowing she didn’t mean my friend Lauren. And I went to the hospital and broke down crying when I hugged her despite promising myself that I wouldn’t, and later that day or a day later, bringing her the best smelling shampoo and conditioner I could find when she finally got to take a shower. They gave me that day, and I am forever grateful. And that feeling of wanting to breathe my life into her will never, ever go away. It is as strong as I type this as it was that night when I left.
She died the next morning, with her family at her side. My pain pales in comparison to Mike’s, to her Mom’s. To that of her sisters and brother. But knowing your pain could be worse, your heart could ache more, doesn’t make it go away. Your heart refuses perspective that your head has, and aches trying to fathom the pain of your friend Mike. Lauren’s mom. Her siblings. Her family.
A few days ago a group of Lauren’s friends and family launched The Lauren Beam Foundation, a charity that hopes to impact the lives of young men and women battling cancer. The timing of the launch, near the anniversary of her death, is coincidental but feels significant. The Foundation was created knowing, first hand, the significant impact that can be made on a daily basis for individuals battling cancer. We want to find people who embody the passion, health, and tenacity of Lauren in some way, and help fund resources that we know will make an immediate impact in their lives during their battle or recovery. Hopefully recovery. I’ve been trying to explain our goal that, in contrast to the goals of larger, well known organizations, is more immediate. More individual. Tonight, as I drove home from work thinking about my September 9, 2011, thinking about how it had been two years since I have seen her, since I’ve gotten to talk to her, trying, still, to wrap my mind around the fact that I never will again, I was scanning the radio and accidentally landed on a country station playing Brad Paisley’s song “I Can’t Change the World” came on. I smiled, knowing that Lauren was one of the few in New York City that would listen to country music, and I often enjoyed the achy love songs embodied in the genre. I thought of the day after she died, when I went running in Prospect Park to clear my mind and body from the ache of sadness — it was cloudy, but the sun peeked through around the southeast bend and Sugarland came on and I knew she was singing to me, her energy there with me. I can still feel that energy as I sit in my car and hear Brad Paisley sing, “I can’t change the world, but if you let me, I can change yours.” It resonated, as that is our goal. To change one world, to change one day, for one person. To give them something that changed Lauren’s world during her battle, even if it didn’t change the ultimate loss.
And it resonated even more because she changed my world.
Brooklyn to Venice 
xx