She was the friend you call on rainy Sunday mornings, coffee in hand, the one you share stories, secrets, and laughs with, three states and 250 miles apart. Even in the darkest times, we always found something to hoot about.
Natalya and I adopted our children from the same organization, and our friendship was born along with our daughters. The fact that our husbands were college pals gave our relationship a dimension of comfort and familiarity; Jack and Natalya felt like family. Twenty-five years later, when our husbands died within months of each other, our friendship deepened.
She was, quite simply and gorgeously, there for me.
On weekends, I drove from suburban Philadelphia to her Connecticut farm, where we set off on spur-of-the moment road trips, laughing and talking our way through forgotten hamlets hidden in a fold of time. Often we stopped at a small-town diner that could have been the setting for a screwball sitcom. Not having a road map was part of the fun.
Natalya comes from an aristocratic Albanian family, most of whom were executed or exiled to forced labor camps by the Albanian communist dictatorship after WWII. Her parents managed to escape to France and later to Italy, but the experience left my friend with a jaded view of humanity and Europe in particular. This made a vacation in Tuscany characteristically quirky and unpredictable. As we walked the gentle hills of Siena, she kept up a running commentary.
“Look at that Duomo, it’s all out of proportion. What a piece of shit! They only built it to compete with Florence. This medieval crap really makes me feel claustrophobic. Let’s get some Berriquocoli.”
With its hairpin turns and devil-may-care nature, Natalya’s personality was as much of an adventure as the back roads of New England or the hills of Siena. But what I treasured most was her presence, warm and sustaining as a hearty bowl of soup. She was, quite simply and gorgeously, there.
Until COVID.
Read More: To Dump or Not: When a Friendship Is More Pain Than Pleasure
Differing Views of the Vaccine
While other friends, both liberal and conservative, welcomed the vaccine, Natalya announced her refusal early and emphatically. She saw in the specter of vaccine passports and mandates the menacing shadow of totalitarianism that had destroyed her family and plundered their land.
I saw deliverance from destruction and heartbreak caused by the pandemic.
She saw in the specter of vaccine passports the menacing shadow of totalitarianism that had destroyed her family.
She lay awake at night worrying about government surveillance, medical coercion, and land appropriation.
I lay awake worrying about dying alone in a hospital on a ventilator.
It was as if we inhabited different regions of the mind, worried in different dialects.
We maintained an uneasy détente, tiptoeing around our starkly different perspectives as the virus marched relentlessly on, decimating lives and livelihoods. Although we still spoke almost daily, I missed our madcap adventures and warm camaraderie.
Since I had received both vaccines, I decided to write a renown virologist on a live-stream podcast and ask whether it was all right to see an unvaccinated friend on car trips or in each other’s homes. “She says the vaccine is synthetic,” I explained. “I come from a family of scientists and, honestly, I can’t even go there.”
The doctor chuckled at my commentary but he looked solemn when he answered my question.
“It’s like a bullet-proof vest,” he said. “Are you going to let someone take a shot at you from a 100 yards? They will probably miss. But you may not want to take that chance. I know I would not.”
Months went by as our long season of physical isolation continued.
The Visit
Natalya jumps at any excuse to travel; she once flew all the way for Florence to retrieve a special implant post for her dentist, who happens to live in my town, and is also my dentist.
A few weeks ago she called me. She sounded happy.
“My crown fell out,” she said. “I think I have a cavity, too. I’ll be down next week.”
For her, the five-hour drive in heavy traffic is a delicious caper, a holiday from the responsibility of an 18th-Century farmhouse in chronic need of repair, and a barn full of rescue horses.
I moved the chairs on my patio further apart in preparation for her visit.
“I’m sorry you can’t stay here,” I reminded her. “But I can see you outside and masked.”
She agreed, and promised to be careful.
Still, I worried. My own dentist appointment was the following day. Sitting in a dentist’s chair with your mouth wide open sounded like an ideal way to catch an airborne virus, but I urgently needed dental work and the dentist didn’t have another appointment for months.
I moved the chairs on my patio further apart in preparation for her visit.
I worried about her daughter, too, as the cases ticked up in our respective counties. Erica lives with Natalya and likes to go clubbing; her three-year old spends the weekends with his dad and grandparents in a neighboring state.
I moved the chairs on my patio even further apart.
The News That Broke Us
The night before Natalya was planning to leave, my daughter, Lily, texted me a copy of the positive Covid test that Erica had posted on Instagram, which was underscored by a one-word expletive.
Red flags were flying in my head when Natalya called a moment later. I picked up right away.
“Lily just texted me Erica’s positive Covid test on Instagram,” I said.
There was a short, stony silence followed by an explosion.
It felt as if she were neatly tying up the loose ends of our friendship.
“You didn’t even give me a chance to tell you!” she said angrily.
Natalya didn’t see Erica’s post as a public announcement, or my daughter’s call as a warning. In her mind, my blurting out the news was tantamount of to a smug “I told you so.” In that moment, her fury over Erica’s test results going public eclipsed her concern about her daughter contracting COVID. To make matters worse I was, figuratively speaking, waving Jessica’s positive test in front of her to prove how wrong she had been in her views.
The air was decidedly frosty as we continued to talk; she said she planned to quarantine. I advised her to get a rapid test, and to go to the hospital if she developed serious symptoms. Then we said goodbye.
I knew when we hung up it was the last goodbye. Natalya tends to hold grudges and doesn’t tolerate what she sees as disloyalty or worse, betrayal. I, and my daughter by relaying the information, had become the enemy she hated and feared–the secret police, the mole, the traitor.
Since then there has been only silence between us. Recently she mailed back a book she had borrowed unaccompanied by an explanation. The book return felt cold and final like a “Dear John” letter, as if she were neatly tying up the loose ends of our friendship. I was sad but not surprised. But at least I knew she was alive.
Sometimes I catch myself replaying our last conversation in my mind. Was the rift in our friendship inevitable? What if I’d been more circumspect instead of blurting out the news, confirming her worst fears about snoops and spies? But there are other “what ifs” as well. What if Erica had not taken a Covid test? What if she had not posted the results on Instagram? What if my daughter had not seen it, and warned me? Would I have seen Natalya that last day, maybe even spontaneously hugged her? These questions haunt me.
Sunday mornings are lonely now. I miss chatting with my friend, three states and 250 miles apart.
Back then, we always found something to laugh about.
Read More: Why Some Friendships Last and Others Don’t: The Secret Sauce
JD says
At least you know she’s alive. I lost my best friend to Covid…before the vaccine became available. We’ve been friends since age 17.
Anne Nicolai says
Pamela Jane,
I understand the heartache. I just lost a dear friend, too, and am feeling bereft, as if she had died instead of just blocking me on Facebook and on WhatsApp.
Before Covid, as a side hustle, I’d been hosting karaoke at restaurants, bars and private parties here in Mexico, where I have lived for 13 years. Two months into the quarantine, in late May, 2020, my friend hired me to provide karaoke at her birthday party. Vaccines were not yet available. No one was masked or socially distancing (not even the 70-year-old guest recovering from heart surgery), but I kept 12 feet away and was masked the entire night for their protection.
When restrictions in our state began to lift in April of this year, my karaoke venues begged me to return to weekly shows, often their highest-grossing night of the week, but vaccinations were not yet available, so I said no. Singing was (and is) much more likely to spread the airborne virus than is simply dining in a well ventilated restaurant. I received my first dose in May and my second in June, but since many of my karaoke clients are younger and hadn’t yet been offered the vaccine, I held off until August 31.
My partner and I really could have used the income to make up for 18 months of living on credit cards which we are now struggling to pay off, so it was tempting to go back to work earlier, but I didn’t want to endanger anyone and didn’t want to catch Covid myself and bring it home. Six weeks of karaoke three nights a week in three different venues passed without incident. Then, around October 14, I got the sniffles and a bit of a sore throat. That didn’t surprise me. Every year in October/November the weather changes from rainy and hot to dry and cool, and I get a cold, or sometimes strep throat. But just in case my cold was some kind of gateway to Covid, I started taking my temperature and using the blood oxygen sensor three times a day (after all, we know so little about how the new viruses and variants will interact over the long haul). The result: no fever, blood oxygen normal. But my head was stuffed up and my throat a little sore, so that weekend and the next, I kept my mask on the whole night when I hosted karaoke and I didn’t sing.
By Sunday, Oct. 24, I had mostly recovered from my cold symptoms and felt fine—but that night I couldn’t taste or smell my dinner. So I got tested Monday morning. Here in Mexico the tests aren’t free—the antigen test is about US$45 and the PCR is US$100 and up, depending on the lab. I know the PCR is more accurate but I didn’t have the money for that, so I got the antigen test and it came out negative—no Covid. Still, I’ve never lost my sense of taste and smell before, so I called a nurse who specializes in Covid and she said she was “99.9% sure” I had it and that the test result was a false negative. She said I should have been in self-quarantine since my symptoms began 10 days earlier, but the recommended 10- to 14-day quarantine would be almost over. So I canceled karaoke the following night (Tuesday) and started contact tracing in case I had somehow infected anyone at the last two karaoke weekends.
My friend had been there on October 22, so I notified her and the four other women sitting with her at the table nearest my karaoke booth that they may have been exposed. All of them went in for tests, and two came out positive for Covid. That meant an inconvenient 14-day quarantine for both of them, and my friend was angry. She wrote me a scathing message on WhatsApp saying I had hosted karaoke for personal gain while knowing I might have Covid—“everyone knows you need to get tested if you have a cold,” she said—and that she was certain I had infected her friends out of complete disregard for their safety. Then she blocked me so I couldn’t respond.
Two weeks have passed since her message to me on November 1, and I am still in shock. I sent an email around to the karaoke community in both English and Spanish to dispel “a rumor that I hosted karaoke while sick with Covid” and to advise everyone that cold symptoms may indeed be Covid-related, and that they should self-quarantine if they catch a cold, just in case. I said that if I had know this, I would have done so, and would have gotten tested earlier, but hindsight is 20/20 and I certainly did not mean to endanger anyone.
In the email I did not mention the venue where Covid was contracted, nor the names of anyone who tested positive, nor the name of the accuser. Everybody wrote back saying they know I would never do such a thing, and that they hope I feel better. Only two people close to my (former) friend have stayed away from karaoke since they first heard that I may have had Covid. In person, singers are telling me they stayed away until they were vaccinated and now they expect that any social interaction might give them Covid, but they’re not going to stop living, especially since the vaccine means that catching the virus won’t kill them.
I appreciate the community support, especially since I am still taking measures to protect them while they are doing no such thing for me. Unmasked singers come right up next to me and speak into my face, asking what key a song is in, or if I can get a different version of their song. My booth is not set off by an enclosure. For five hours with people singing next to me, I’m the most susceptible person in the room. In fact, if I did have Covid, I must have caught it from one of them—but I’m not looking for someone to blame. I am aware that it’s risky to spend 15 hours a week at karaoke, even though all three of my venues are well ventilated. But if I get sick, it’s my own fault. Same for my clients. If they’re concerned about catching the virus, they should not go near anyone unmasked and they certainly should not attend events like karaoke, where people drink and forget to mask up even if required.
This pandemic has changed people. We are all finding out who our real friends are.
Pamela Jane says
That is so true! And who knew that we would go through something like this in our lifetimes? I feel badly for the younger generation, and all they have gone through as well as for everyone who has lost a loved one.
KS says
I’m sorry to hear this and unfortunately there seems to be a lot of similar stories. I too lost a friend over differing views of on the vaccine. Our families were very close. We were friends, our husbands were friends, our kids. They were like family to us. We were all a covid pod for the last year or more seeing only each other, or if we saw anyone else outside our family we’d quarantine before seeing them again. When the vaccine’s came out, we waited a bit but then decided to go ahead and get vaccinated. They were adamant that they would not be putting that poison in their bodies. I was excited to get back out into the world and start seeing some of our other friends who were also vaccinated. We are still careful and where masks if we have to go anywhere indoors, which is rare as we both work from home. Our good friends however still insisted that we couldn’t see each other unless our family quarantined beforehand, which I felt was an unreasonable request. Not to mention we could still meet outside socially distanced if they were so concerned. Ultimately, it really started feeling more manipulative than any real desire to see us. Like, a weird friendship test, like, do we feel they are worth quarantining for or something, even though we had done so for over a year, and that really made it nearly impossible to see other friends. Needless to say the friendship is apparently over as she “unfriended” me on facebook which I guess makes it official.
Jeannie Ralston says
I’m sorry about this. It’s so weird what will set people off.
KS says
*Wear masks… lol Wish there was a way to edit these after you hit post.
Pamela Jane says
I’m so sorry you had to go through this. It’s a shame, also, that the issue of vaccines became so politicized, and so deeply divisive.
Barbara Gabriel says
This scenario is playing out with a few friendships in my family. My niece’s longtime friend won’t be able to attend our Christmas gathering as she has for 10 years since her mom died. She’s dug in her heels in her refusal to be vaccinated and is traveling widely. Very frustrating.
Jeannie Ralston says
This is too bad. I just can’t wrap my head around it.