My own true story about ... envy (from the 'Envy' blog).

In my own life I recall a time that I envied a friend.  I learned a number of lessons from that experience.  

It all began in 2001 when my husband and I moved to a lovely beachside suburb  in Adelaide. We moved into a 'renovator's delight', a 'fixer upper'.  OK , we moved into a really run down bungalow that had been on the market for over six months, and a rental for the last 15 years, and  no-one in their right mind wanted it.  

The paint was peeling - where the old house had paint.  There were holes in the plaster on the walls inside.  The old carpet smelled musty and it was full of sand.  The house  had salt damp and deep cracks. The front yard was a meter high in bark chips, but still the weeds pushed through. Rubbish was strewn around the block like a rubbish tip: old broken bird baths lying on their side, old bricks and plastic pots and other rubbish left by previous tenants.  But at least there was a yard out the front.  The back of the block had been cut off with a fence, close to the old house, and sold off years earlier.  Another house now sat bang up against it.  

But … it was in a nice suburb and the house had potential. 

Soon after moving in, as I walked through the neighbourhood, I noticed a beautiful renovated character house on a large block a little further up our street.  It had recently been sold and  I wondered who might have bought it.  

The house had lovely lawns and garden, where we had mountains of bark chip and weeds.  It had four bedrooms, a massive shed out the back, and a beautiful bullnose veranda all the way around.  We had an old shed plonked in the front yard near the rusty wire front door… and no back yard at all ... or veranda.   

Six months passed and finally the removal truck came and so did my new neighbour and soon to be new friend - who I will call Debra because that is not her name. She moved into the lovely character home with her two children and her handsome  husband.  She and her husband had been childhood sweethearts, and it was clear that they were still very much in love and best friends.  Her children were also very sweet.

It turned out that Debra and I were the same age, with only four weeks between our birthdays, and our children were also only weeks apart in age.  We soon found that we enjoyed each others company very much.  We would have coffees together and keep a packet of each others favourite brand of tea or coffee ready at our respective houses - for 'drop in visits' and chats on our front porches or in our kitchens.  We sometimes walked together to the nearby beach with our children, and we watched over each other's houses and pets when the other one was away on holiday. 

While I enjoyed the company of my friend I couldn't help envying her a little bit.  When we first met I was still trying to juggle specialty training in paediatrics and care for two young children.  I had no extended family to help. No-one. As well, my husband, David, was at that time studying for a computing degree  and so he left me to manage the house and the children most of the time.  I was very tired and busy and stressed.

However, Debra was a stay-at-home mum - something my husband and I could never afford to do.  My friend's husband was on such a good salary  she didn't need to work to pay the mortgage like me.  As I rushed off to work in the mornings or came home exhausted at the end of a long work day - still needing to make dinner, do the housework, help the kids with homework, and put out the washing in the dark, and a whole list of other chores still waiting for me as a working mother - I couldn't help envying her lifestyle.  She would cheerily wave to me on her way to the beach with her dog in the mornings, or as she went for a ride on her bike  to meet friends for coffee or coach basketball at the primary school.  

I envied her more relaxed lifestyle where she could enjoy her children and her life more than I did.  I envied her lovely big beautiful house with four bedrooms and two bathrooms and air-conditioning - while we squeezed four of us into an old unrenovated, unair-conditioned, two bedrooms, one  bathroom house ... with no bath, just an old shower.  I loved my dear friend - I just wanted some of what she had.

I knew intellectually that I should  be grateful for all the wonderful things I had in my life.  And I was grateful for those things.  My beautiful children.  A husband I loved dearly who was my best friend.  A lovely beach up the road.  So many things that I was grateful for.  But still - her debt-free and carefree existence, her lovely house, her free time - was what I envied - a bit.

The years passed and Debra remained one of the loveliest friends I have ever had.  We helped each other as mums and as friends.  In fact it was helping each other one day that I first became aware that things were not right for Debra.  

For a number of years we had alternated driving our children to a local art class once a week after school. The year was 2008 and on that night it was Debra's turn to take the children to the art lesson.  But she was twenty minutes late.  It wasn't like my super-organised friend to ever miss one of her children's activities.  So, I decided to call her and offer to drive her children to art that night if something had come up for her and she couldn't make it.   

As I waited for her to pick up her mobile phone I wondered what might be keeping her busy.   Finally, a voice answered the phone.  It was a women I didn't know.  I was confused by this … and my concern about Debra shifted up a couple of notches.  The woman didn't identify herself.  She just said "Hello, I'm answering the phone for Debra.'

I had been a hospital doctor for eight years and I knew how nurses answer the phone when they hold a doctor's pager.  They answer the phone like that.  I therefore knew that this was a nurse answering Debra's phone?!

My world stopped.  The importance of an art class evaporated into nothingness.  Why was Debra in hospital?  What was going on? A heavy feeling of dread filled me and took my breath away for a moment.  My mind spun.

Finally I managed to asked, 'Is this a nurse?'   Silence followed on the other end of the line.  'I'm Debra's friend' I continued.  'I was calling about an art class … for her children.  I was going to take them …'

There was another pause before the woman spoke again.  This time her voice sounded more gentle and sympathetic.  She briefly explained the usual medical spiel about not being able to say anything  about Debra or where she was … but I could leave a message.

I put down the phone and ran through the drizzling rain to her house.  Her husband happened to be on the front porch.  He looked lost and sad and scared… like me. 'What's wrong with Debra?' I shrieked.  I didn't mean to shriek.  I was so confused. But  I knew whatever was wrong with Debra had to be fairly serious if the hospital couldn't say anything to me and they wouldn't put Debra on the phone. I knew it couldn't be any simple elective procedure either - as Debra would never put appointments for herself ahead of anything she did for her children.  I knew Debra so well.  Her children came first - always.  And here they were missing an art class.  So, it had to be very serious or an emergency.

Debra's husband explained that she was in hospital after having a seizure.  She was having some tests, he said,  but the doctors still didn't know the cause of the fit. 

Two weeks later, when all of the tests were finished, Debra was told the cause for her seizure and she given a diagnosis.  She had an incurable stage 4 brain tumour. 

I can still see Debra's face as she told me this.  I can see where we both stood in her house as the words spilled quietly from her lips.  For the first time in her life she looked very small and scared and without hope.  Her usual bright, bubbly, loud and confident personality was gone.  Her eyes were dark pools of sadness. She just stood looking at me. I wanted to give her hope.  But I couldn't.  It broke my heart but I couldn't give her any hope. In my life as a doctor that is so rare for me.  In my work in skin cancer medicine in ten years I've never had a skin cancer spread or recur.  Ever.  Yet, here with my dear friend - I couldn't say anything.  I just put my arm around her shoulder - and we stood there together quietly, as tears ran down our faces.  We both knew that she would die within about 12  months.  

Debra was intelligent and practical.  These were two of the qualities she had that I had  always admired.  I would not waste her time telling her that the doctors might find a cure.  They wouldn't.  Chemo and surgery and radiotherapy would buy her  12 months extra time with her family - maybe.  Without it she would die within weeks.

During the next 12 months I met with Debra on my one day off work - Wednesdays - and we would have morning tea together and talk and laugh and eat cake and drink coffee.  At other times during the week we would occasionally chat and I would leave magazines for her in her letterbox every week. Her many friends and her extended family helped Debra a lot over  that time.  People came and went, helping her, everyday.  

Debra was so brave about everything she went through, and she rarely complained.  However, her biggest regret, she often said, was that she wouldn't see her children grow up.  

I will say here, five years later, that Debra's two teenage boys are wonderful and kind and hardworking responsible young men .  They are such a credit to her and her husband.  I see them regularly - and I am proud of them - for both of us. Debra would be so proud.

Debra died just after I had my fourth child - Oliver - in 2009.  She got to see Ollie though.  I brought him over to her house  just before she went into hospice.  She was able to lift her head off the pillow.  She looked at him and she smiled.  Two weeks after that she died. 

I wrote in my short story of fiction in my 'parenthood blog' about a young women at her grandmother's funeral with a six week old baby in a baby sling - crying through the funeral service but having no tissues with her.  She had to wipe her tears and running nose  with 'wet wipes'.  Well, that was me at Debra's funeral. I stood at the back of the church, having arrived a bit late, with my six week old baby in a sling around my neck, and my face  so wet - from tears and a running nose - and only 'wet wipes' with me.  My mind was still a fog of tiredness with the new baby and grief.

Six months after Debra died I knew that I had a problem with 'pathological grief'.  Usually, people are beginning to move on, in their lives, within six months of grieving a death. But I couldn't get past it.  I was still in tears whenever  I thought of her.  And I thought of her everyday and often during the night as well. I also found it hard to get  back into life again: having goals, having fun, feeling part of the living.   I'd been around death so much during those 12 months supporting my friend. Watching her suffer.  I felt separate to other people now and I didn't know how to get passed that.  I didn't know how to let it go and move on.

Then one day, around that time,  I happened to pick up a book on spirituality.  It was in spite of myself.  I had never bought a book on that topic before.  Ever.  As I paid for it - I felt silly and self conscious.  I still don't really know why I picked it up.  I was waiting, on that day,  for my daughter to choose a novel.  I wasn't planning on buying a book for myself at all. 

Over the next two days I read the book. And I got better.  Just like that.  I was able to put Debra's death into perspective of what life is about.  I understood that life is hard and unfair sometimes.  But that is just what life is.  It can be  sad but it is still wonderful as well.  I loved my friend Debra but I could now move on and let go of the grieving.  I felt alive again and back with the living. I learned to remember my friend as she was when she was well - not during those last 12 months when she had been so ill.

I'll never forget Debra.  But I'm no longer sad and I no longer feel guilty for having a happy life.

I also learned, while  Debra was ill, that her life had many difficulties that she hadn't told me about.  Areas of her life that had been sad and disappointing - but she'd never mentioned them to me.  I realised that I should never have envied Debra her happy times.  Quietly she had struggled in ways  that I never knew - and as I now realise everyone does.  People just 'get on with it' and usually don't tell other people about their hardships.  No one's life is easy.  Life is not meant to be easy.

So now I don't envy other people. I just don't.

In the last five years especially, I've developed a new perspective on many things in life.

Everyday and many times during each day -  I've learned to think of all the lovely things in my life.  I am mindful of things now: a lovely cup of coffee, sunshine warming my face, a sea breeze,  sunlight dancing on the ocean, the kindness of so many people I meet … and so many, many things.  I feel happy and content in the little things in life now.  I think that is where most happiness can be found.

Within a year of Debra's death - my own life came into difficult times - with the poor health of one of my children.  That is another story - for a much later time I think.  However, the difficult things that my family have endured with our sick child, over the last four years now, have been made a lot easier thanks to the lessons I learned five years ago after Debra's death.

Another friend of mine told me once:

'When the student is ready - the teacher will come.'

I think I was ready - finally after six months of grieving Debra's death, to learn the things in my life that I needed to learn. 

So many things I used to worry about and envy in others I have learned really don't matter.