Best Friends

Janet and I worked together at Northtown Bank. We became friends right away. We took breaks together and had lunch together almost everyday for many years. We shared everything. She told me all about her life and her with her husband, Mike.

I thought Janet & Mike had a great relationship. They were one of the couples that I partied with on the weekends. We were wild and crazy. Mike and Janet both lead seperate lives but seemed meet in the middle. I liked that. She was always free to do girl things with me or to spend time with me and my girls. She even baked a birthday cake for them on their birthdays. She was wonderful, everyone liked her. I thought she was so funny. I didn't really like Mike much at all. I couldn't see what she saw in him but they seemed to be happy.

Mike was a really big guy, tall, around 6'6" to be exact. He wore really strange clothes and colored Converse high top tennis shoes. His hair was long and wild. He had a big, bushy beard and he was scary looking. My girls were afraid of him at first. He used to use a fork to comb his mustache, not appealing at all. We spent a lot of time at their house. We had cookouts on the weekends and their friends became my friends. Hardly a weekend went by that we weren't all together.

One day while at morning break with Janet and friends, she annouced that she was pregnant. I was hurt because she hadn't told me first. I remember feeling upset but I don't know why it bothered me. I was kind of angry in a way because I thought she and Mike weren't getting along. I wondered if this might bring them closer together. I couldn't imagine Mike as a father.

I went through the pregnacy with her, sharing clothes and throwing a baby shower for her. I was excited as her baby grew inside her. Toward the end of the pregancy when she was 8 1/2 monthes I noticed she looked very pale. She told me she didn't feel very good and was going to the doctor that afternoon. Later that day I got a call telling me that the baby was to be still born. I left work immediately and went to the hospital to be with her. We cried together and tried to comfort each other but there are no words of comfort for that type of situtation. Janet was induced and had to go through labor and then deliver the baby. Mike and I took turns staying with her while she prepared to deliver her dead child. It was gut wrenching.

When the baby was delivered she was named Margaret Kathleen. Margaret for Janet's grandmother and Kathleen for me. I was deeply touched. I heartbroken, my friend had lost her child. On the day of the funeral, Mike carried Margaret in a little white coffin no bigger than an ice chest. He walked bravely to her gravesite to lay her to rest. I cried harder than anyone, Janet was in shock. It took her years to recover if she ever really did.