Bad Republican by Meghan McCain

Author:Meghan McCain
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637742143
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2022-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

FRIENDS FOREVER

When my father was dying, Fox News contributor Kat Timpf, a close girlfriend of mine, became my grief whisperer, my death spirit guide. Kat and I originally became friends at Fox because we seemed to be the only women who came to the studio without makeup on and wearing sweatpants. Everyone around us appeared camera-ready 24/7.

Several years ago, Kat’s wonderful mother, Anne, got sick and was repeatedly misdiagnosed before she was finally found to have a rare disease called amyloidosis. Symptoms don’t usually appear until the disease is advanced. The time from Anne’s correct diagnosis to her death was just three weeks.

Kat’s situation with her mom was arguably worse than mine with my dad because her mom died so quickly. She told me that when they were at the hospital, her mom was responding to email invitations saying, “I’m so sorry I will be unable to attend. By then, I’ll be dead.”

Since then, Kat has worked to call attention to the disease, and she’s been incredibly wise about death.

As my father was dying, I kept asking Kat, over and over again, “What’s it going to feel like when he dies? Is it going to feel like a sharp pain? Is it going to be scary? Is it going to be happy? Am I going to cry?” I was obsessed with figuring out what was coming at me and how I could prepare myself.

“You’re in shock,” she said after the diagnosis. “You’re in survival mode. When he dies, it will be traumatic. It will feel like a car crash. You will need to go easy on yourself. Take time off if you can. It’s like a physical wound—you need to heal.”

She told me a story about how emotional she was when her mother was dying. One day, she was on a Greyhound bus from her home in Detroit to New York, where she was trying out to be a Fox contributor. Someone took her seat and wouldn’t give it back. She completely freaked out and started screaming, “Get out of my seat! My mother is dying!” Then she dumped the entire contents of her purse onto the person.

When she told me the story, she said it without embarrassment. “When you’re experiencing grief, becoming hyper-emotional is totally normal,” she said.

She was so direct and so straightforward. I always feel better after speaking with her.

As the first anniversary of my father’s death approached, she said, “Where are you going to be? What are you going to do?”

“Nothing special, because I’m going to be totally fine,” I said. “I’m in a good place!”

“Bro, you’re not going to be fine,” Kat said. “Call me at three in the morning. Call me whenever.”

And sure enough, I wasn’t.

She just seems to know every answer to every problem, and she has a dark sense of humor about life that was incredibly cathartic for me.

Having good friends like that who were willing to keep it real helped me get through a rough couple of years.

One of my

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.