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When I lost my best friend to pancreatic cancer, the news came like a sucker punch\u2014but it shouldn’t have. The signs had been unmistakable for many months. They eluded me because I didn’t want to see them. I wanted her to continue in the role she’d played in my life for so long, the person who was calm when I was frantic, who modeled patience when I was impulsive, who told me the truth when I was lying to myself. I could trust her. In childhoods like mine\u2014marked by poverty, alcoholism, and domestic violence\u2014trust has a hard time taking root, no matter how well-meaning the grownups are. For me, trust was an acquired taste. I’d learned to resist it. But from the start of this bond, which continued more than thirty years, I knew something was different. And I was right. Ours was a connection that withstood time and distance and all the inevitable misunderstandings that can undermine a friendship. It was a vehicle for celebrating our gifts and our good luck. She passed away on my son’s birthday, in May 2001, before the towers fell, before I could brace myself for how callous life can be. But the years passed and a freedom tower finally rose from the sadness, shining in the sun, and grief comes now in fits and starts, rarely strong enough to spoil a memory, never mean enough to make me lose my trust. https:\/\/www.fiveonthefifth.com\/vol-9-issue-2-story-1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I lost my best friend to pancreatic cancer, the news came like a sucker punch\u2014but it shouldn’t have. The signs had been unmistakable for many months. They eluded me because I didn’t want to see them. I wanted her to continue in the role she’d played in my life for so long, the person…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}