Cokie by Steven V. Roberts

Author:Steven V. Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2021-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Friend

“She held everybody up.”

Roberts family photo

Cokie’s friendships were deeply important to her. She understood that real relationships require time and tending, attention and affection. She did something to help a friend every single day of her life, and on many days, she did many things: wrote a note, made a call, sent a check, delivered a gift, offered a hug, held a hand, shared a meal, comforted a child, gave a talk, answered an appeal. Her door, and her heart, were always open. Her patience seemed inexhaustible and her advice invaluable. She showed up when her friends birthed their babies and buried their parents. She counseled them on choosing partners and raising families, confronting bosses and switching careers. As she got older, she extended her reach to her friends’ children, remembering their names and birthdays, their schools and jobs. One of her most consistent commitments was visiting patients in the hospital. I used to joke that Cokie felt qualified to practice several medical specialties—oncology, obstetrics, even orthopedics—but in fact countless friends (and friends of friends) benefitted from her knowledge and leaned on her for support. She was particularly helpful to new mothers—“You know, babies don’t break,” she would tell them. And she regularly reached out to women newly diagnosed with cancer. She knew that when people receive that dread news, they are often so stunned and stressed that they are not thinking clearly, and need an advocate at their side to ask questions, listen to the answers, and represent their interests. Linda Winslow recounts what happened after her surgery for ovarian cancer: “The surgeon told me afterwards, he came out and Cokie was asking him questions. She was ferocious in her protection of me, because I didn’t have any family at the time down here to do that. She was badgering this surgeon and he said, I felt like I was on Meet the Press because I kept ducking all these questions, thinking, my God, what am I in for here? I wanted to correct him and say wrong network, but I thought, oh, what the hell.” Carol Klinger, a producer at NPR who switched doctors and treatment after consulting Cokie, says simply, “I realized she probably saved my life.”

That’s why so many women thought they had a special relationship with Cokie. That’s why Bob Murphy sat at her funeral and wondered how one person could have “several thousand” best friends. I talked to more than fifty of them, and I heard the same answers, the same stories, over and over again. Also the same word. Love. As Marcia Burick, a friend from Wellesley, put it, “I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody who had so much love for people. Real love. Just incredible.” Nina Totenberg, her fellow Founding Mother at NPR, says, “Those of us who were lucky enough to have been her friend will probably never have a friend like that ever again. She never forgot us. She always remembered us, whether it was in her first book or in her daily life or in any speech that she gave, we were never forgotten.

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.