Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg kept me up until 1a.m. last night.
A fictional portrayal of losing a friend to breast cancer. Being an Oncology Nurse, I am finding reflections of my own feelings in the words of Elizabeth Berg. She has lured me in to look at another facet of the work I do. I watch friends, both male and female, provide support on all levels to the patients that I work with. I also have found myself drawn in to the lives of some of my patients to the edge of friendship. This cannot be helped when you see someone weekly for over 1 year. That is more often than I see my own parents. How do you not develop some form of friendship over that time? Granted, once the weekly treatment is complete that piece recedes, comfortably to a happy to see you once every 3 months...
I think what has so engrossed me in this story is that it is told by a woman who in never named. It is all I. I was stunned last night as I was picturing the characters in the story and forming faces for the names that I could not picture the narrator. And then it occurred to me....she has never been named. In that moment, I realized how I had put myself in that spot and kept comparing her relationship to Ruth (the young woman with breast cancer) with mine to a dear friend. I had been drawn in to the story and though I know how the story will end....I see other unexpected things along the way.
