Who would throw a party to celebrate her death?
Only Jillian Parks. Age thirty-six. Stricken with breast cancer. Given six weeks to live.
Rachelle had marveled over that decision since receiving the invitation to this evening’s gathering at one of San Diego’s most elegant ocean-view restaurants. She and Jillian hadn’t talked in years, but Rachelle stood here tonight, awestruck, as she watched her childhood best friend greet a roomful of friends and relatives.
Rachelle stood near a wall of windows that featured lapping waves as the backdrop. Her eyes kept pace as Jillian’s husband, Patrick, pushed Jillian’s wheelchair wherever she directed.
Dark circles had settled beneath her friend’s amber eyes, but they still lit up when she paused to chat with guests who lingered over a generous seafood buffet or stood in somber small groups, chatting softly. Jillian was waiflike, but even cancer hadn’t stolen her beauty, Rachelle decided.
Jillian hadn’t lost her flair for fashion, either. Tonight she wore an ankle-length, soft gold gown that featured one strapless shoulder. The wavy, black hair Rachelle remembered had been replaced with a Pocahontas-style wig that complimented Jillian’s oatmeal complexion.
Forget that they hadn’t spoken in a decade. How could Rachelle not be here? She surveyed the chandeliered room of seventy-five or so people who, like her, had come to shower Jillian with love. They too seemed surprised by her festive mood.
Rachelle’s eyes watered when Patrick pushed Jillian up the wheelchair ramp onto a wooden platform that had been temporarily positioned in the middle of the expansive dining room.
Everyone gathered, and Jillian smiled when she reached the center of the makeshift stage. The ocean behind her served as a natural mural.
Had she chosen to speak now, specifically because the sun was setting over the water? Rachelle wondered. The scene was simply beautiful, and fitting of such a special occasion.
Jillian picked up the microphone that had been resting on her lap and held it to her ruby red lips. She scanned the room, seeming to peer into the eyes of everyone present, including Rachelle’s. Finally, she spoke.
“Thank you all for coming tonight. Some of you traveled from the opposite coast to be here with me. Some of you altered plans to be here. Some of you had to work financial miracles or request time off from work to join me, and for all of that, I’m grateful.”
She extended her hand toward Patrick and he handed her a brown leather book that she raised in the air. “This is one of my first journals. In it, on about the tenth page, is a map for my life that I laid out eleven years ago. I was still wet behind the ears, thinking I could do anything. I was full of optimism and pride, with little reason to doubt myself. I titled this list, ‘Ten Things to Do Before I Die.’
“The beautiful thing is, I accomplished every single wish on my list before this terminal diagnosis was confirmed in early June. Everything.
“I have traveled to Australia and Italy, been on an African safari, and swam with the dolphins. I’ve served in the Peace Corps, vacationed in Hawaii and Fiji, and married my soul mate. I was allowed to co-parent three godchildren who fortunately didn’t have to live under my roof and endure my quirkiness full time.”
Jillian laughed and blew a kiss to the three young girls, who were standing nearby with their parents. “I landed my dream job, shooting photos for National Geographic, and met Nelson Mandela and Oprah while on assignment,” she said. “My favorite trip? To the Holy Land, where I bathed in God’s presence.
“When I received the news that this cancer had gone undetected for so long that it was in the advanced stages, I pulled out this journal and re-read this list, which I drafted on my twenty-fifth birthday. I couldn’t believe it when I checked off everything on it.
“Isn’t that amazing, you guys? How many of us can say we’ve actually achieved some of our dreams, let alone all of them?”
Jillian paused to let the power of that reality sink in. She waved her finger. “I am human though,” she said. “After I thanked God for granting me these blessings, I asked a huge favor. Couldn’t I just change the title of the list from the ‘Ten Things to Do Before I Die’ to something else? Like, ‘Ten Things to Do Before I Reach 40’? or ‘Ten Things to Do Before My Hair Turns Gray’? I mean, come on, he didn’t have to take it so literal!”
She chuckled, freeing everyone else to embrace the joke. The room erupted in laughter.
“I invited you here this evening to thank you for giving me the gift of you. Of your friendship. And your love.”
Jillian searched the group and spoke to several people specifically. “Rachelle—we made mud pies and played jump rope and, before there was such a thing as AIDS, pricked our fingers and pressed them together so that we could be blood sisters. You kept my first secrets, helped me through my first broken heart, and even suffered punishment on my behalf rather than tell your mother that I was the one who ran through the living room and broke her favorite lamp.”
Rachelle nodded and smiled, despite the tears spilling down her cheeks. How had she forgotten all of that? How had they let time, and other people, separate them?
“Amina, you guided me through college when I was this sheltered little girl who didn’t realize there was a world outside of Philadelphia. Yolanda, just how did you snag our high school football star before I could?”
Another round of laughter filled the room, mingling with the flow of tears.
“Okay, okay, I guess I did pretty well myself. I’m keeping my man.”
Jillian turned toward Patrick, who stood off to the side of the stage, watching her bask in the love radiating from the crowd. “Patrick, you have been the earth and wind to my fire; the ebony to my ivory; the true definition of a helpmate and soul mate. I love you.”
She turned back to her friends. “I do have one request of each of you: Develop your own lists. Look at your lives and consider where you need to make adjustments. Life is way too short to take for granted or live halfheartedly. Do what you dream. God put the dream there. Promise me that as I move on to another phase, you’ll give this part of your journey your best shot. That will be the best way to remember me, to honor our bond.
“To be honest with you, I am not ready to die. I’m just not ready. But I’m thankful that I am connected to God and I know where I’m going.” Jillian paused and allowed a slow smile to spread across her face. “I’m thankful that I got to meet each of you and love you. I will leave here a happy woman, especially after the gift you have given me by showing up tonight.
“I am drinking in your presence,” she said in a voice that had begun to tremble with emotion. “I’m going to tuck away this night in my memory and ask God to let me keep it, when I get to heaven.”
Jillian’s efforts to remain upbeat had been for naught. Rachelle took a tissue from a travel-size package that was circulating from hand to hand. Jillian’s goddaughters ran to the stage and hugged her neck.
The youngest girl, who appeared to be five or six, flung her body across Jillian’s lap and sobbed. Rachelle winced at the child’s obvious fear and pain. Her mother came quickly and took the girl to a side room.
Jillian, who was visibly spent, raised the microphone to her lips a second time. She sighed. “This isn’t easy—for the babies or any of us. But I really do want to celebrate the good and positive journey I’ve had. Will each of you come and give me a hug? Show me some love?”
Patrick rolled Jillian off the stage, over to a long table covered with a sea green tablecloth. She sat at the end of it, so that her friends could review the pictures of her life, from childhood in Philadelphia to her young adult years at Everson College in Jubilant, Texas, to the decade she traveled the world as a professional photographer.
Everyone except for Jillian’s mother, brother, and sister, and several other relatives, formed a line so they could talk with her. As they waited their turn, they had time to peruse the informal photo gallery.
Rachelle, who grew up next door to Jillian and shared a dorm room with her when they went off to college, took in each of the images and felt the layers of time peeling away.
She remembered the backyard swing set captured in one of the photos and the teacup wallpaper that had graced the walls in Jillian’s room until her sixteenth birthday.
She recalled their hangout spot on The Yard, the campus square at Everson College where freshmen and sophomores who didn’t have transportation gathered most nights to socialize and flirt. There were graduation day photos and images of a party that followed later that evening, at the home of Rachelle’s aunt and uncle, Charles and Irene, who lived near the campus.
Rachelle felt another wave of waterworks coming. What had happened to the youthful fervor her eyes possessed in those photos? It had never dimmed for Jillian, but somehow she had gotten off track.
Before she could formulate answers, it was her turn. Rachelle knelt before Jillian and hugged her gingerly.
Jillian grasped her tightly, cuing Rachelle that she wasn’t fragile. She pulled back and stroked Rachelle’s face. “Thanks for being here, Rae,” she said softly, using the nickname she had given Rachelle when they were sixth graders and thought it was no longer cool to use their parent-given names. “It’s so good to see you. The last time we talked we didn’t agree on something really big. I don’t know how that has worked out for you, but I heard through your mom that you were doing well and that your kids are beautiful. I hope you are happy.”
Rachelle attempted a smile.
Jillian’s eyes indicated that she understood. “Well, get happy, okay? For me and for you. You’re living for both of us now. I’ve never stopped loving you like a sister, you know? Tell God your heart’s desires. Trust him with all of them. That’s the only reason all of this is okay—I learned how to do that when I was in Jerusalem.”
Rachelle nodded. “I need to book a trip there; maybe it will clear out some of these emotional cobwebs.”
Jillian shook her head. “That was my place of revelation, but it’s different for everybody,” she said. “You don’t have to cross the world to find God. He’s already with you. Just open up and let him in.”
Rachelle hugged Jillian again.
“I love you, Jill, and I am so proud of you,” Rachelle whispered in her ear. “I will tell my children about you and the beautiful person you’ve always been. I’ll never forget you.”
“I know you won’t, Rachelle,” Jillian said. “While I can, I will be praying for you.”
When Rachelle walked away, the charge to “be happy” shook the chambers of her mind.
She thought about Gabe, who treated her like a piece in his art collection. She thought about her daily routine of playing the perfect wife, socializing with the proper friends and volunteering with the appropriate groups just often enough to make the city’s socialite pages. In this moment, it struck her that her children were her only genuine source of joy.
Rachelle allowed herself to accept these realities tonight as she thought about Jillian’s open charge to embrace truth and happiness. Was she up to this task?
On her way to the back of the dining room, she paused at a table where Amina, the college buddy she and Jillian had added to their crew freshman year, sat chatting with their high school friends, Yolanda and Marcus Drake.
The three of them stood and gave her a hug.
“Can you believe this?” Yolanda asked.
“Only because it’s Jill,” Rachelle said.
Amina nodded. “Only she could pull off something like this and leave her guests with a gift.”
Rachelle decided to keep moving before she became a puddle of raw emotions again. “Stop by my table before you leave tonight so I can get your number and email address,” she told Amina.
She turned toward the onetime teenage sweethearts, Yolanda and Marcus. “You two? I still keep track of you in Philly through my mother. Keep taking care of each other—you both look great.”
Rachelle snaked through the rest of the tables until she reached her destination. Jillian’s brother and sister sat with their petite, Vietnamese mother in the rear of the room at a table that gave them a clear view of Jillian but allowed other guests to be closer to her. Though each of them bore some resemblance to their now-deceased African American father, all of them, including Jillian, had their mother’s eyes.
As Rachelle hugged Jillian’s mother, she stroked the long ponytail that Mrs. Wright had worn for as long as Rachelle could remember. Mrs. Wright clung to her.
“Can you believe my baby?” She spoke quickly and softly, as if speed would diminish the thickness of her accent. “Who would throw a homegoing service before they leave earth, other than Jillian?”
Rachelle wiped a tear from her eye and laughed. She sat next to Mrs. Wright and draped her arm around the back of the woman’s chair. “I’ve been thinking the same thing for the past few weeks—I believe everyone else here has too. But I’m glad she did this. I’m thankful that she gave me a chance to see her again.”
Rachelle settled into her seat and feasted on dessert and conversation with Jillian’s family for the rest of the evening. She felt heartsick about her friend’s circumstances, but something else in her spirit was rumbling.
The simmering volcano shook her, because for the first time, she knew she couldn’t ignore it. Not after what she had experienced tonight.