Last Monday I met a friend downtown. You could say we’ve known each other awhile, ever since I wrote that article about pinkwashing back in October. But this is the first time we met face-to-face.

She slid into the booth across from me at Bar Toma and we exchanged greetings and chatted and ordered plates of antipasti. We weren’t sure what the other did for a living, or how long the other had been married and lived in Chicago, but the one thing we already knew was the most important : both our mothers died of metastatic breast cancer. Her mother lived with it for 30 years, mine for 15.

I’ve never met anyone who has been through what I’ve been through.

I know people whose parents have died – died of cancer, even. But it’s always a different story. I’ve never met anyone close to my age that understands the endless hospital stays, the decades of living in survival mode that can make you feel like survival mode is the norm, and the long, drawn out, bittersweet goodbye. The strange relief and gratitude when it is all finally over. The way it is never really over. The way that it complicates desires of motherhood and ordinary happiness and the belief in your own future.

I sat across the table from her, listening as she talked, watching the familiar joy and sadness and cynicism and raw hope pass over her face with each story, awed that a complete stranger was not a complete stranger to me.