I lost a friend of almost 30 years just a few weeks ago. She suffered from Crohn’s disease her entire adult life, and cancer these last seven years. She was a fighter in all respects, and one of those people who told doctors just how things were going to go down. When hospitalized 18 months ago from a complication we all thought would end her life, she repeatedly told her caregivers (in fact, anyone within earshot) that death would not be happening just yet. I don’t think any of us believed her –I said my final goodbye– but there she was, a couple of months later, back at home and work.

During that hospital stay, while flooded by a cocktail of drugs, Carla brought up the unlikelihood of our friendship. She never remembered the conversation, but I’m grateful for it because I knew what she meant. Most of our years together were spent living in distant cities. We didn’t share a circle of friends or plan vacations. We had long periods, years even, when our lives went off in different directions and we wouldn’t lay eyes on one another. But we always stayed in touch –old-school, over the phone, like teenagers. Carla always called, and, for 30 years, we talked.

I remember one call in 2002. Carla stood at the precipice of launching her comedy film festival, but had suddenly stalled out because of some serious jitters. I listened about the trepidation she felt in producing such an enormous project; her fears over the unknown; her questioning what it was she was trying to accomplish. When she was finished talking, I did what any good friend would have done: I lovingly gave her a big shove towards the edge of the cliff she was staring down. Fortunately, she jumped, and went on to premiere her festival, thanking me later for the push. Little did either of us know that 15 years later she’d be returning the favor.

Carla was moved to palliative care a few days before she died. I flew in to see her, and this time I knew it was goodbye. Her mother, an 89-year old fiery beauty, taped a picture of her daughter on the wall directly across from her bed. It is a striking black and white photo that depicts a woman –a much healthier woman– in the prime of her life, with eyes full of wisdom and wit. Her mother told me that when she first showed her daughter the picture and asked her permission to put it up, Carla winced, unable to look at an image of herself that so contradicted her current state. Scolding her daughter, she firmly reminded Carla that her failing body did not represent who she was inside. Just as her own 89-year old wrinkled, confined-to-a-walker body, did not represent who she was inside. Who we are inside, she insisted, can never disappear. It was a breathtaking moment. And though I knew she was talking to her daughter, her words permeated every cell of my being.

I’ve wanted to write about middle-age for a while now. When I turned 50, that desire grew even more potent. But despite my attempts (and there have been many), the topic of mid-life felt unwieldy and vast; I couldn’t externalize the unease I was feeling. What I’ve come to realize over the past few weeks is that Carla gave me a giant push towards the edge of my own cliff by expressing what I have been unable to articulate: the wince. I know the wince she gave her mother and the incongruity she felt of the outside not matching the inside. Though the stakes can’t compare, when I greet myself in the mirror each morning, it’s there –that cringe of displeasure in seeing my fifty years (and the bedsheets) imprinted on my face. I fixate on wrinkles and loose skin –the roadmap of my life—instead of the beauty of my years. I question my relevancy and diminishing value in the world. And I wonder, when did this happen? Why do I judge myself so blindly? How the hell did this superficial, ageist, bully-of-a-wince find her way into my life?  Well, I say, no more. I’m calling her out. If she’s going to beat on my spirit, then I’m going to beat back…against the discomfort, the stigma, and my own bad attitude in being a half-century old. For fifty weeks I will tell the truth rather than hide from it. I will lay witness to my own prejudice. I will relish in this milestone and confront everything it has to offer. And if that doesn’t work, I’m calling Carla’s mom.

**Carla died on August 28, 2017. We met when working at a start-up television station in Toronto, and continued our friendship, collaborating on occasion, for the next three decades. Carla was beyond loyal and so good at picking up the phone. We spent hours talking while I sat in traffic, especially these last few years. Carla truly believed that laughter is the best medicine, and founded the World of Comedy Film Festival in 2003. She was a storyteller, an advocate, and deeply passionate about her friends and large extended family. Above all, she was loved, and will be is missed.

NOTE:  This beautiful memoir by Nina Riggs, also taken by cancer, comforted me this past summer. It is gorgeous, funny, smart, and well-worth reading.