francie

It probably wasn't a smart idea.

My boyfriend Don wanted to live with me. I didn't want to leave my friends. So instead, we all lived together. 

It was the fall of 1974. I'd been out of school a year and was living in Allston. I became good friends with the two girls living across the hall from me: Randey and Francie; they were from Chicago.  It was through them I met Don.

I had planned on living with Francie and my childhood friend Vivien. 

So we simply added Don and found a great apartment near Harvard Square in Cambridge. It was a duplex apartment that looked like a cheap motel. We thought it was great. Four Harvard law-school students lived next door, and an old hunchback roamed the parking lot every night. 

Hamp, Vivien's boyfriend, brought in a big piece of wood to build a book case. The wood stayed near the entry way until we moved out. Don bought me an Irish Setter named Jessie. She was the cutest puppy, but I did a poor job of training her. Our apartment always smelled of urine.

We had a couple of  odd roommates who joined us along the way. Donnie K moved in for a while. I have no idea why he's dressed like this, but it was not his usual attire.

And Karen. She never ate, or rather, she never paid for food.  She would join us for dinner though, and happily eat our scraps.

Francie seemed to always be sitting under one of those gigantic hair dryers.

Either that, or socializing with giant rollers in her hair. Here she is eating artichokes with Robbie, one of the next-door Harvard Law students.

On rare occasions, Francie could be seen without her rollers or a hair dryer. (How sad digital cameras didn't exist back then).

I visited Chicago with Don for the first time in February 1975, and by the fall had moved there, along with Francie and Don.

Francie and I remained good friends until I moved back to Boston in 1981.

summer 1976

And then we lost touch. 

Throughout the years, I thought about Francie, and finally contacted her in December 2011. She was still living in the Chicago area. Had a dog, a boyfriend, and a great job. She told me she had been diagnosed with cancer in 2007, and it had spread. But she said for now she was healthy. She sounded optimistic, strong, and just like the Francie I remember. 

Francie was going to come stay with me in New York over the weekend of February 3. But then she moved, so we rescheduled for April. But then that didn't happen either. We emailed a few times, but never spoke again.

Last week I see this Facebook post:

I am a close friend and want to keep you current on Francie's health. Sadly she is in the final stage of her cancer journey. 

Friends write and post pictures. We call each other. It'd been years and years since anyone I know has seen or spoken to Francie.  But great memories don't require much of an impetus to resurface.

I speak to Don this morning and he tells me some surprisingly good news. A cousin of Francie emailed him and told him that the friend's post may have exaggerated Francie's health. He said Francie was up and walking just the other day, and things are not as dire as the post suggests.

I hope Francie is doing well. I hope she rallies. And I hope she gets to see how much she is loved. 

And maybe — hopefully — that NYC visit can happen after all.