Jun 22, 2021 4 min read

Many years ago, my father informed me that human beings think about death, on average, every seven seconds. I don’t know if this was ever true, but it has certainly been true for me the past several days.

On average, for the last week or so, a friend or acquaintance seems to have passed away every few days.

Three funerals in a week sounds like a reductive movie title, but it applies. Grief and mourning were becoming so routine that I was beginning to understand the widows of the Spanish Civil War, who dressed head-to-toe in black for the rest of their days. These then-elderly women were still plentiful in the early 1970s when I was a student in Valencia, as were the blind veterans who sold pencils on street corners alongside national guardsmen who wore tri-cornered, patent-leather hats and toted semiautomatic weapons.

Franco’s oppressive military regime perhaps helps explain the widows’ lifelong commitment to sorrow and their loyalty to the dead.

Recently, I had just committed my own black dress to the back of the closet, hoping not to see it again for a long while, when a message from a stranger appeared on my Facebook account. “You were the last to comment on her page, so I thought I’d give you a heads-up,” wrote Luke, who identified himself as the nephew of my closest childhood friend – Pamela Lewis Kinsey.

“She went peacefully and on her own terms after a long (and Pam-esquely private) fight with cancer,” Luke wrote.

I’d lost a beloved goddaughter and an acquaintance who died suddenly from an aneurysm, as well as a daughter/sister of other friends. But losing one of my oldest friends, one whom I considered a best friend, was a crippling quadruple blow.

In my last comment on Pam’s page, I had written: “Thinking of you and wondering where/how you are!?” That was on Feb. 5. I’ve no idea whether my message to Pam coincided with her decision to remain silent about her cancer, but she never responded either on Facebook or to me directly. The last time I saw her was a decade ago in New York, where I was living at the time.

I knew exactly what Luke meant by “Pam-esque.” She was idiosyncratic at birth – and private except to her very closest friends. I knew that she liked to sleep without pajamas under piles of comforters with the air conditioner set to freezing. I knew that she was smart, if not especially studious, and that she was an avid tennis player. One day after high school, she ran south from our hometown of Winter Haven, Fla., with a tennis pro before deciding to trek back north to college at Smith. Her first job was at the New Yorker, where, she said, she mostly made summer camp arrangements for her boss’s children. (True to form, Pam never disclosed his or her name.)

She was quiet. When she did talk, she spoke in a husky near-whisper. She loved solitude and books, which is probably what bonded us. Her parents were sophisticated and provided an open home that was loosely slipcovered, happy with dogs, and a refuge for me beginning at age 9. Her sister, Jenny, rode bareback on her pony, a streak of long blonde hair flying through the orange grove in which their lakeside house was nestled.

These are my early memories. During the rest of our lives, Pam and I touched base here and there, and then, separated by geography, got busy again. Always, I think we both considered the other best of friends. So why didn’t I know she was sick? Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t I push?

I think I understand how one might wish to control the uncontrollable by holding death close in a private space, apart from the ordinary and the inevitable questions that one can’t answer. But not sharing is its own form of cruelty. Not allowing loved ones to prepare themselves, to say goodbye in some way, deprives us of the gift of ultimate giving.

During that dinner 10 years ago, as we sprinted through decades in a hasty attempt to “catch up,” I wish I’d listened more intently, delved more deeply. And vowed to stay closer. To a sick and dying Pam, a casual poke on social media probably felt like little more than a box checked. We were obviously in different places, and I didn’t know. I can say only this with certainty: I won’t make that mistake again.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post. Her email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.