Friends: Installment 2 - Betty

Of the three friends who remain from my college years, Betty in some ways is the closest, yet the farthest.

She lives halfway around the world in Kibbutz Massada, three miles from the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee, perched at the edge of the Golan Heights. She's been there approaching 30 years, and I haven't seen her in at least 15. She believes she's found where she belongs. She has no intention of returning to the United States anytime soon and never permanently. That we've been able to maintain contact over these last years speaks to the miracle of friendship. A lot is owed also to the advances of technology and cyberspace. Lord knows, if she'd been left to depend on my letter-writing, we'd have lost touch long ago. I don't do a whole lot better with email, but every so often we connect and have a marvelous chat.

It doesn't help, of course, that we are in opposing time zones. When it's 6:00 am here, it's 5:00 pm in her part of the world. Some of our best conversations take place when one or the other of us is awake in the middle of the night.

Betty and I met at the bus stop at Los Angeles State within the first few days of our freshman year, through a mutual friend with whom we've both lost contact. We became buddies right away and have remained so for almost to 50 years.

Betty has been present at every major event in my life except one—my marriage. Come to think of it, I shouldn't have been at that one either. (For the record: I thank my Higher Power every day for the two children that resulted. Farida and Nasreen are the greatest blessings of my life.)

We spent Thanksgivings, Christmases and birthdays together. Family in every way but blood.

Betty's the one who tracked me down and phoned me to get my butt home because my dad was very ill. In that instant I knew he was gone, even though she didn't say so. He'd suffered a massive heart attack, collapsed and died. My mother didn't know where I was, but Betty figured it out and found me. She wore a red dress to his funeral. It probably shocked my conservative midwest relatives, but the memory delights me to this day.

Her first car was a Prinz, so small that the two of us could actually lift it, which on one occasion we did.

Her mother and my mother were polar opposites, but to their extreme credit they did everything they could to get along. They even endured a trip to Laughlin, NV, together, about which Betty and I heard differing versions for years. Somehow our mothers knew that, even if they weren't destined to be the best of friends, we were, and that we'd need each other in the coming years.

Betty's mom was Auntie Flo to my daughters, but she might as well have been Auntie Mame. Tall, auburn-haired and flamboyant, she stood out in a crowd. My mother, in complete contrast, shrunk into the shadows at any gathering she attended. No wonder the two didn't get along.

Betty was present at the birth of my first child, Farida, and so was Auntie Flo, in a way. After struggling through much of 21 hours of labor with me, Betty called Auntie Flo, who had been a private-duty nurse for years.

Auntie Flo took matters into her own hands, phoned my doctor and demanded in her deep, authoritative voice, “what the hell do you think you're doing? Give that woman a c-section NOW!” Within minutes I was being wheeled into the operating room. If it weren't for her intervention. I'd probably still be pregnant.

Because of her nursing experience, when her doctor told her she was ill with multiple myeloma, Flo knew exactly what that meant. With immense courage she endured years of treatment and intense pain until the treatments did no more good. When Betty called to tell me that Auntie Flo was in Huntington Memorial Hospital and not expected to make it much longer, I raced to Betty's side. We got a rollaway bed delivered to that hospital room, and Betty and I—neither one of us withering flowers—slept side-by-side on that bed.

Waiting.

Finally Betty needed to leave to run a few errands, and I needed to get home to check on my girls. We were fairly sure nothing would happen until we returned. Flo's longtime friend, Beryl, came to hold the watch. It took me an hour to drive home to Huntington Beach, and I hadn't been there long when Betty called to say that Flo was gone. To this day Betty often reminds me how much my sharing that rollaway bed—and sharing the pain of her mother's illness—meant to her.

The child of a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother, Betty decided to learn something about her father's heritage. Her original journey to Israel was a two-week sightseeing trip. During that excursion she fell in love with the land and its people, and she set about to find a way to return.

Some time later, she went back as a volunteer at Kibbutz Massada. During that adventure she worked in the communal kitchen and milked cows, something quite unlike her former profession in the States as an insurance adjuster. She stayed six months, returned to her home in Pasadena and began her plans to make “aliyah” to Israel. Despite her father's Jewishness, she found she had to convert to Judaism in order to be granted kibbutz membership. At the time I found that odd.

It took something like six months for all the paperwork to be complete for her permanent return to Israel. During that time I became pregnant. At 43. What was I thinking? Despite all the negatives of having a child at that age in the midst of a moribund marriage, I looked forward to that child with all my heart. As a result of an amniocentesis, we learned it was a boy. Farida and Nasreen picked out his name: Nicholas. We bought a crib and baby clothes.

During my fifth month in August, 1983, Betty and I went to see Simon and Garfunkel at Dodger Stadium—just one of several events we had attended together there, such as Elton John shows and that marvelous game three of the 1981 World Series where Fernando Valenzuela pitched for the Dodgers. We were out in the left-field bleachers, but we loved every minute.

During that S & G concert, I discovered that I had begun to spot. The following day I made an appointment with my OB-gyn. While I was in her office, while she listened with her stethoscope, Nicholas died. She scheduled me to go to Hoag Hospital that afternoon. I called Betty, and she came running. As I lay waiting for the interminable end of that pregnancy, she sat beside me, wiping my brow.

Despite my pleas, Betty left for Israel, established a life there and eventually married her Israeli-Argentine sweetheart, Doobie (AKA “The Bear”).

In June, 1989, she returned to the States. Bill, a mutual friend, had moved to Palm Springs after his partner, Rich, passed away of cancer. He asked us to come for a visit. We soaked up the Palm Springs sun, swam in Bill's pool, relaxed in his starkly elegant condo, dined at Sonny Bono's restaurant, and caught up on old times.

Bill was Betty's neighbor at her first apartment building on El Molino in Pasadena. Betty and I spent years speculating about him. Was he gay or wasn't he? During those days you didn't dare speak the word “homosexual” out loud, and Bill wasn't telling. He was obviously afraid of losing our friendship if he admitted it. He died, alone, of AIDS, several years later, never understanding that we loved him for who he was, not what he was.

Upon Bill's death we learned that Rich had died of AIDS, not cancer, during the early years of the disease.

As we drove back to my Santa Ana home from Palm Springs, I had a sudden premonition of trouble. Upon our arrival, we discovered that my mother had been ill, and my daughters had been left to deal with the situation, which they did in yeoman fashion. It was clear, though, that Mom needed medical attention. We took her to the emergency room at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, where she was admitted. As I tried to deal with major problems with her health insurance coverage. Betty did her best to calm me down. Not an easy job at any time, but especially then.

Although my mother had a host of health problems (Parkinson's disease, high blood pressure, COPD, lung cancer), none of them were imminently terminal. The current problem proved to be diverticulitus and wasn't life-threatening either. Nonetheless, her stay in the hospital dragged on for days.

At 4:00 am the morning of June 25, I got a call from the hospital.

“Come quick,” the doctor informed me. “Your mother has had a pulmonary arrest, and we're trying to intubate her.”

Betty was staying at our house, just days before her scheduled return to Israel. I roused her and asked her to come with me, while my husband stayed home with Farida. Nasreen was away visiting a friend. I knew, however that day ended, it wasn't going to be good, and I would need her moral support. When we arrived, the doctor informed us that my mother had passed away. The doctor, Betty and I wrapped our arms around each other and cried.

Betty returned to Israel, and I have seen her only once since then, when she and Doobie came to the States. I had moved to Bass Lake by that time, and she let me have the privilege of introducing the two of them to Yosemite.

We've been in touch more often recently, thanks to the Internet. We've spoken on the phone a couple of times over the years, but each of us finds that we mainly chat about the weather, for some strange reason. It's easier to “chat” via computer.

Betty's brother-in-law, Yossi, passed away recently of the same horrible cancer that took her mother. She watched and remembered as he suffered for three years, the last few months in hospital and near death. She comforted Doobie as best she could. In the end she called on me as the connecting thread between the two halves of her life, and I felt blessed that she turned to me as I have so often turned to her.

Lest I may have led readers astray, Betty and I have shared much more laughter than tears and years of precious memories. In fact Betty may just be the person most responsible for my move to the mountains nearly twenty years ago. I credit those road trips we took up to Clark Porche's cabin in Fawnskin, near Big Bear, and later ones to Idyllwild, for cementing in my soul the need to be surrounded by mountain peaks.

Betty's been begging me for years to come see her home in Israel. I admit to being afraid, and I'm not sure it's the safest place in the world for a person bearing the name Hussain. But I miss her so much, it may be time soon to make it happen, if I can find a way.

I love you, dearest friend of all.