This is a song of life. Like most songs, and all stories of life, it contains both joy and sadness, and it begins like this.

Debbi, Rosie, Julie, Marcia.

I’m unsure how the other three listed our four names – it always fell in this order for me, whether from my lips or from my pen. Though we came to know each other at different times, different phases of our lives, we bonded slowly throughout our thirties and forties, the epoxy of feminist sisterhood, womanhood, personhood, motherhood, and “careerhood” (I know – not a real word, yet a made-up one that works) creating an adhesive emotional substance that could not be pried loose once set.

In either our 42nd or 43rd year – each of us was born in 1950 – we edged toward the idea of traveling together decades before the young adult book The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. We garnered the enthusiastic support of our husbands, especially Rosie’s Bill. He would tell us we needed breaks as we juggled work, small children, aging parents, changing bodies in this time of a maturing woman’s life. Sometimes, Bill would call the other three of us. “You need a trip on the books,” he’d say. “Rosie works so hard. She comes back refreshed and happy. Keep at it, convince her.” We recognized that he was speaking to all of us; we loved him for his cheerleading.

Between 42 (or 43) and 70, we booked fifteen or sixteen trips in total. Many only can be described as grand and adventuresome – crossing the Pyrenees on foot from France into Spain on the Camino de Santiago; exploring the coastal villages and colonial cities of Mexico; crisscrossing Italy by train and automobile; prowling the spice markets, bazaars, hammams, and mosques of Turkiye; steeping ourselves in Greek culture (twice!), among other international stops.

We established a pattern of journeying about every two years, using that space to rebuild our travel funds and to assuage our guilt, which reared its head with sickening familiarity despite Bill saying it should be otherwise. We chose more modest trips closer to home on many occasions – hiking in Colorado and California; spa stays at Madden’s on Gull Lake; sharing each other’s midwestern lake cabins or warm-weather homes to conserve when tight times hit; leaving our mark on Nantucket Island and Cape Cod (where a bar owner may remember us forever, not bad for a bunch of “gals” in their sixties). We crashed while taking a hot-air balloon ride in New Mexico, an experience Julie resisted in the first place and and never will repeat, and neither will I!

Images, too, stacked up in our photo albums: horsewoman Debbi being approached by a wild mare in the Pyrenees; the four of us tumbling out of the hot-air balloon’s basket onto a deserted highway; the hour we spent observing a moose bathing in the pristine lake of a valley outside of Vail; sipping wine on a moonlit beach, watching the waves as we spoke even more deeply; finding ourselves in a hotel suite with the oddest pole right in the middle of it, launching us into rip-roaring laughter as we each took a turn at “pole dancing”, on and on.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, we missed a year – the one in which we all were to celebrate turning seventy – grounded by fear and a desire to fight this thing by doing the right thing by clipping our wings. In those frightening times, we wondered if we’d embark on another trip again.

Oh, how we missed each other. The richness of our adventures resided not only in museums, cathedrals, Mother Nature, plays, shops, restaurants, concerts, and operas, but also, and dearer to us, in endless conversations, debates, secret-sharing, joke-telling, tear-shedding. During three decades of togetherness, we whispered of the loss of pregnancies; the joys and worries born from having children; the ache of losing parents; the rewards and the irritations of long marriages; the frustration of living in a world that devalues women and girls even as we acknowledged our privileged position as white women, and our pride in fighting back, each in our own way. We admitted to insecurities and doing tough internal work, we compared wrinkles and gray hairs suddenly appearing, we rejoiced in dressing up for each other and going out on the town, village, or metropolis.

Finally, as 2020 gave way to 2021 and we rolled up sleeves to receive the hoped-for vaccines, we agreed to meet at Madden’s on Gull Lake, ostensibly to mark my 71st birthday (yes, I am the eldest by a few months to my chagrin) and because I begged us to come together. Most of our life’s partners joined us, a dream come true. Sitting around a big round table for hours, we easily chattered and supped, each face alight with the joyful look of reunion.

The next morning, the four of us – Debbi, Rosie, Julie, Marcia – slipped into hiking boots and set out for a bracing spring walk. Along the way, Rosie marched a bit ahead with her long strides and nonchalantly mentioned that early June meant her annual physical, something about which each of us was strict. The picture of health and beauty, Rosie perhaps exemplified best our shared values of wellness and well-being.

The blow came a few weeks later with a diagnosis of stage four Multiple Myeloma. By late February of this year, Rosie was gone. And then there were three.

Debbi, Julie, Marcia.

The three names didn’t fall easily from my lips. For months, the surviving trio tried so hard to get together to honor our Rosie. Dates and places changed. The scope of the trip shifted and morphed. It appeared we wouldn’t get there, and it seemed as though grief froze us. Then, just last week, we finally met in Duluth after pushing through any final reluctance. A bit shy (for us) at first, we leaned into each other during three days of walks, meals, spa treatments, shopping, movie-watching, and domino-playing. We recollected, reminisced, recalled. We laughed. We cried. We honored Rosie.

To be honest, the hardest times seemed to be at meals. Table settings tend toward twos or fours and rarely threes. Every table at which we sat included the empty fourth chair. We tentatively mentioned it only once, perhaps reticent about a big display of public emotion.

On our last night, seated around a table for four at the landmark New Scenic Café just north of Duluth, I spotted a longtime member of the Green Lotus Lakeville Center. I waved Rebecca over so she could meet my friends. She expressed condolences as she learned the nature of our trip. Debbi pointed out the empty chair, saying, “We so wish she was here.” Rebecca gazed at the study wooden chair – the New Scenic Cafe is, after all, a Swedish restaurant – and answered confidently, kindly, “She is. Look, she’s right there.” Tears sprang to three pairs of eyes because we knew it was so.

Debbi, Rosie, Julie, Marcia.

And then there were four again, the bonds of friendship intact and not about to be broken. This is a story of the secret sauce of friendship, a song of sadness and of joy. May all beings be blessed with friends like these.

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Marcia Appel

In 2006, Marcia, a former journalist and corporate executive, wrote the plan that launched Green Lotus. In 2007, Green Lotus opened, and Marcia and business partner Merry Beth Hovey, who joined in 2009, planted the seeds of service that are the foundation of the Green Lotus philosophy. "As teachers and healers," Marcia says, "we meet students and clients where they are. We learn and grow from each other -- and have fun doing it."

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