My mom was in her 20s when she met Diane through an ad in the newspaper. Diane was looking for help with her garden and happened to be in the same Serenada neighborhood as my parents. I was just a baby when my parents became friends with Diane and Dave, so I don’t remember the bike rides Diane and my mom would go on. I don’t remember how Diane and my mom would watch the children while Dave and my dad would go to the honkey tonk for “Friday Night Boys’ Club.” I don’t remember how Diane and my mom started a babysitting co-op in the neighborhood called S.O.S. (Save Our Sanity).
I do remember when Diane and Dave and their three children moved to “the country.” I remember our parents sending us kids to “the woods” to go catch frogs or build a fort. I was by no measure a tough kid, especially compared to Diane’s kids, so she always sat with me or tended to my injuries when I couldn’t hang with the kid gang.
Diane was the first woman I knew who didn’t shave her armpits or her legs. She was the first woman I knew who kept her maiden name after getting married. She was always the first to go swimming and usually the last to leave a party.
I remember how she would steer a car with her knees. I once watched her drive around her backroads neighborhood, steering with her knees, peeling an orange.
Diane was my mom’s friend, one of her best friends. Besides my own parents, she was probably the adult I spent the most time with as a child.
I remember her telling me about a vivid dream she had where a crab kept pinching her leg and how she woke up with a cramp in her calf. I thought this was particularly interesting, because Diane and Dave were the only people I knew with a water bed. Were you more likely to dream of getting pinched by crabs if most of your dreams were on water?
I remember Diane going back to school for education and asking me to help her with an assignment. I told her stories to accompany picture books she showed me. I thought it was just for the moment that it happened, thinking how incredible it was that Diane was going to remember all of this. But when I finished telling the stories I had made up, Diane got up and went to the corner and stopped a tape recorder. In my head I thought, “Yeah, that makes more sense.”
I remember how Diane was the first (and best) person I saw make HUGE bubbles with wands and ropes. I thought she was magic. She was.
There were three party houses when I grew up: Dave and Diane’s, Lori and Jerry’s, and our home. The parties at Dave and Diane’s usually involved a ping-pong tournament. I remember Diane’s exclamations every time she missed an easy shot: “Oh jeezzzz!” with frustration that always turned to laughter.
I remember Diane taking the kids on hikes to the “Cow Graveyard” during Labor Day weekend parties at Lori and Jerry’s. We pretended it was a grand elephant graveyard of the Sahara when it was just a few dozen bones from likely one cow. She always helped us imagine bigger adventures.
In high school, I remember how Diane helped me with a wildflower project for school. She showed me Columbine and told me that it was her favorite wildflower.
In college, she taught me how to weave this basket I still have. I did the first part, but when my fingers got sore and I complained, Diane finished it for me while I called my boyfriend and talked to him in one of the bedrooms in her home.
In my early 20s, Diane sent me a marble pumpkin cheesecake recipe that I have made every Thanksgiving since.
In my late 20s, I brought Evan home to Georgetown and we had a party at my parents’ house. Diane and I drank margaritas in the front yard part of the party and I asked her if she could believe that my mom wouldn’t let my live-in boyfriend (Evan) and me sleep in the same bedroom?? She couldn’t believe it. Diane was the first and only person to ever tell me, “You know we used to call your mom ‘Party Doll.’ That was her nickname!” We both laughed and I thanked her a million times over for telling me this spectacular news.
I remember Diane at all of my families’ graduations, art openings, and parties. At Evan and my wedding celebration. At our baby shower. But more than anything, Diane was a vital part of my mom’s girl gang. She was one of five girlfriends who adventured and crafted together, but a part of a larger community of friends who got together often through decades to be together and laugh and swim. My mom would go on trips with her friends (usually planned by Diane) and report back about how good it was for her soul.
The Thursday after the election, my mom called me. We talked for a long time about so many things. She told me Diane was sick—like really sick—and that it had happened so fast. My mom sounded worried. Diane was always one of the healthiest people we knew, so I didn’t really believe that anything going on with her could be unconquerable.
A couple days later, Diane was admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery for a perforated bowel. I still thought that she would pull through. She was so young. So healthy.
On Friday, I had nine women over just to hang out—in real life… instead of following each other on a screen. I told my mom about this get-together I was having, because my soul needed some friendships—desperately.
Being with these women was so great. We were all exactly who we are in our souls. A friend, Juliette, who I’m not even that super close with (yet) showed up first and I was buzzing around like a frantic host. I ordered new stools that had just arrived: in a box, disassembled. I made a comment about how I wish they had come a day earlier. “I can try to put them together, if you want.” So Juliette literally put together my stools WITHOUT INSTRUCTIONS (they somehow weren’t in the box??) while I mixed her a manhattan and friends started pouring in. When friends saw what was happening, they said, “Oh my god, Rachel, this is ridiculous” and “Actually, this is perfect for you, Juliette.” (huge shout out ALSO to Katie Davis for handily helping with stool construction.)
We ate tater-tots (best group snack… convince me otherwise), we drank wine and whisky and frozen margaritas, we laughed hard and cried some. I thought about how I moved to Jackson in my early 20s, so these were like the friend group that my mom had and has kept for 40 years and counting. I thought of how lucky I was to have most of these friends for almost 15 years already… some almost 20 years already.
The next morning, my mom told me that Diane passed away in the night. She had an aggressive form of lymphoma that her body was too weak to fight. I sobbed in my bed.
Diane was so much more to so many other people. She was an incredible mother and grandmother and sister and wife and teacher and gardener and swimmer and friend. She was only one of my mom’s best friends to me. This is what I thought. I thought that this was an “only.” I thought earlier that maybe I didn’t even have many memories of Diane and I cried harder about that. How I don’t have her phone number in my phone. I don’t know if I have a photo with her (just her and me) from after I was five-years-old. The photos and phone numbers aren’t there, but the memories keep coming back. And when I laid them all out, end to end, they make up more of my being than I expected. My memories and love for Diane are woven all through my life like one of her beautiful baskets, bringing me back to her holding me as a toddler in her lap, on her fuzzy legs, her arms wrapped around me in a big hug and her grinning with her gritted teeth and then laughing loud with one big, “HA!”
I am just now realizing how precious this unique relationship can be—the one you have with your mother’s best friends. How Diane held my mom when she was crying, likely hiding from her family. How she may have even held my mom’s hair back during the Party Doll Era. How Diane held my mom’s hand and held her children and saved her sanity. And I can only hope and pray that I get to be a Diane to one of my friends and their children. I can only wish that one of my friends could somehow be a Diane to Marcelline.
Thank you, Diane. I miss you deeply and instantly. I hope somewhere sometime again in some kind of alternate universe, we get to drive empty country roads in the Texas sun together again… windows down, you in your tank-top, armpit hair blowing in the breeze, steering with your knees, eating your orange, until you pull over because you see a wildflower you want to show me.
Quick Hits:
Jam of the Week: Mamalarky – “Nothing Lasts Forever.”
(I’ve been getting back into music discovery lately… my safe space… just going down rabbit holes and tuning into radio stations all over the country to find songs that get stuck with me. I especially like that the band formed in Austin, Texas. that feels right.)
This Poem Is Perfectly Beautiful.
(the good dark. ♥️.)I Love This Show So Much Right Now.
(and I was yesterday-years-old when I found out this season is the last season. 😭😭😭 why can’t we have nice things??)
Adding These Monogrammed Beauts To My X-Mas List.
(I saw Heidi Gardiner on a subway in NY and she had a monogrammed Clare V bag and I loved it and was so proud of not accosting her. these little notebooks remind me of that Clare V style, but MUCH more affordable. also, if I’m gonna get a CV bag, it’s gonna be this one.)Hear Me Out: I Love This Soap Scent.
(Evan’s cousin had it at her home and I instantly fell in love with it. I swear it kiiiiinda smells like this luxury scent that I’ll buy as soon as I’m bonkers rich.)I’m OBSESSED With These Glasses That Make No Sense For My Life.
(lily of the valley!)I Have a New Fave NYT Game.
(also, I played the crossword late last Sunday and nailed it and was like, I AM A GENIUS!!! until I realized it had already flipped to Monday’s puzzle.)I Should Probably Read This Book, Huh?
(besides the title, I’ve heard it’s really good.)I Could And Would Be A Part Of Almost All These Groups.
(but why is none of them called a “murder?” too on the nose?)OMG So Embarrassing.
(something I would do.)
This Is Marcie Almost Every Morning.
(and I’m like, “it’s 4° outside, Marce. we live in Wyoming now.”)
Thank you for being here. I am so grateful for this weird world of screens that connect us, but this is your serious AF reminder to get together in person with your friends and your family and your mom’s friends.
xxo,
rachel.
Thanks for sharing your memories of our Diane.