Talking with Josie

Mrs. Tomlinson. Mrs. Hathway.

That’s how we usually started our conversations. It’s funny for best friends to be so formal, but that’s what amused us. That was Josie and me, always looking for a way to keep it fun. We’re going to ride around the neighborhood on our bikes after dinner, smoking cigarettes and laughing, we promised each other. Our kids will be doing the dishes because our evening starts when we sit down for the fine dinner we have made for everyone. And from then on, it’s crossword puzzles, good books, a show, and bike riding.

We didn’t get to do that, but we always meant to. In fact, we could barely finish a movie together, interrupted either by our kids or ourselves, talking about something that couldn’t wait. We did sit in their glorious Bethesda backyard by the trampoline David put up, in the green grass and under the blue sky, sipping something out of the elegant acrylic glasses painted in happy colors with bikes. We talked and talked and talked.

Whatever else was going on–trauma, delight, holidays, boring days, dinners, coffees, doing chores–we talked. Tatum and Sophia were so aggravated with us on our college trip down to the Carolinas because regardless of which of us was driving, we were talking. We talked nonstop for 5 hours straight, there and back. The girls, teenage girls who never run out of talking, ran out of talking and begged us to stop but we couldn’t. They put in their ear buds and they slept. We just kept talking away, so pleased with our situation and ourselves.

That was almost as much fun as the night we dined on the pergola with all the families, the kids straggling in from poolside still in their suits, and for some reason we talked all night in Southern accents. Maybe that was Clara’s request. But once we started we couldn’t stop. Even when normal people like Uncle David showed up, we couldn’t stop with the drawls. It was so much fun sitting under the stars under the pergola under the summer night air. Who knows what we talked about–don’t remember. Nothing and everything. Serious and silly. Anything. With a straight face. Josie could do it wearing candy corn bucked teeth too.

She took me for serious prayers when Tatum was missing. She lived at my house for a month when I had to be away. She and the girls were our Covid-bubble family. You and Sophia and Georgie belted out the happy birthday song to Tatum on April 21, 2020…from the lawn at 8 am, standing in front of a huge yard sign. We drove each other’s kids to crazy faraway places just because it needed to be done and we semi-single moms couldn’t do it. We knew the inside-outs of each other’s marriages and parenting preferences, deepest hurts, fears and plans. We never missed an Edgemoor thrift sale. We went to each other’s churches, baptized our children together, and celebrated every single Mother’s Day together, usually over a homemade-by-kids brunch and mom-made coffees with cream. At your birthday last year, we had coffees and pastries at Boulangerie Christophe’s and later we dined around your table with your 99-year-old neighbor and vowed to be like her at 99. At my birthday in June, we picnicked at Wolf Trap with our families and listened to John Legend under the stars.

Remember our Bruno Mars dance party in the kitchen? “Feeling good! It’s my birthday…you look good! Whoooo. Put some perm on your attitude, you gotta relax.” Finn and Josie dancing was a sight to behold; legendary. Clara wanted to play her new Christmas tunes on the piano so you could sing along. You would have loved that.

We talked through all the details of all these moments before and afterwards, and no detail was unimportant or dismissed by Josie when it came to someone she loved. We talked so much we got in trouble–with our kids (“Mom, isn’t it time to go upstairs now?”) and our neighbors: “It’s too late for you to be playing in the yard. You need to go home now,” Andy said to your kids as we guiltily got out of the car. We had been sitting in the car talking for an hour one Monday night while our kids grabbed an unexpected gift of tire swing time, too late for a school night.

We aggravated our kids with long nature walks along the canal and Great Falls, even in, especially in, the dead of winter. “Isn’t this great?” One of us would say. “It’s heaven,” the other would reply. We aggravated our kids with museum visits and insistence on doing chores before hanging out. They aggravated us with regular requests to come home from school for no apparent reason.

We talked about the cows and the fences. Did you know that cows will walk the entire length of a field looking for holes in the fence before they will start eating the lush green grass waiting for them? They need to make sure they’re safe and the boundaries are secure. This is what we reminded ourselves and each other when enforcing boundaries with our kids, keeping them on track, at home, in school and with joy felt harder than we had imagined it could.

The last time I made her laugh was when I reminded her that God, whom she loved with her whole heart, cared about all of the details of her life, all of them. He would take care of things and she need not worry. I reminded her that he knows the number of hairs on her head and in her eyebrows…and we laughed.

When I walked out of Suburban Hospital Monday night, December 2, I couldn’t believe I was now living in a world without Josie. I had held her hand as she took her last breath, as her pulse slowed and stopped. When I shopped for shoes for Finn to wear to her funeral on Friday, I thought, “I can’t wait to tell Josie about this Nordstrom Rack, it has everything.” When I stood at her graveside at All Souls Cemetery on Saturday, December 7, I thought, “I thought we were going to Boulangerie Christophe for your birthday today.” I took Georgie and my kids instead and cried silently to myself instead, over pastries and coffee.

Last year at this time, we stole away to wrap all the Christmas presents together at my church, away from spying eyes. The only present I can give you now, Mrs. Hathway, is to love your children like my own, and I already do. Forever. I will never be able to fill your cool, colorful Hoka running shoes, but I’ll keep giving them the nature walks, pastries, and stars under the pergola every chance they’ll let me. And I’ll make sure they know how to talk and talk and talk. I love you forever, Josie.