Last week I was sitting outside waiting for a friend to pick me up when a young woman I'd been close to when she was a child walked by with her friend, whom I also used to know. We chatted for a while and "caught up" and then my friend arrived and I asked the young woman to call me so we could have lunch. She'd been in Southern California, then two years on the east coast farming after she graduated college.
But yesterday, a friend of mine said this young woman had a brain tumor, and had just had surgery for it. They think it is benign, and since she seemed fine when I talked to her, she is recovering remarkably well. But I know she probably won't call me, and I have no way to get her cell phone without revealing who told me about the cancer.
I'm trapped in a secret that was told to me. I don't even know how to reach her mother any longer or exactly where she lives, though it's nearby, because she remarried and moved into his house. I am praying for the full recovery of this young woman I knew from birth, and spent countless hours with when she was a child. Every year on her birthday we went out to lunch and a movie. I stopped sending gift cards after high school, as she did the teen thing of not thanking me or responding. I emailed her once in her freshman year of college, but since then have only seen her a couple of times out walking in the neighborhood when she was home visiting her parents.
What is right speech in this case? I think perhaps it is letting her contact me if she wishes, but otherwise sending tonglen to her and praying. I'm not really in her life, and I know she has great support. I'll just be a silent witness.
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