A dear friend died of breast cancer eight years ago on October 5th at the tender age of thirty-two. I learned this week that her husband is holding annual tennis tournaments in Atlanta in her honor to raise funds for early breast cancer detection.
The week that Kim Chance Atkins died, I didn’t know about it as I was in the midst of a move from Phoenix, Arizona to Santa Monica, Calif. The last time I spoke with her was that August, a few weeks before my wedding. Kim was worried about hurting my feelings—so typical of her to worry about others. She had called me in Phoenix to tell me how sorry she was she’d have to miss our wedding. Her family always spent Labor Day weekend together and she just didn’t want to miss it this year.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it as I remembered getting together with her family in Gatlinburg, Tennessee one Labor Day a few years earlier. I knew it was a special weekend with her family in the mountains. She assured me she was feeling great—but in retrospect, perhaps I should have known that she wasn’t. She insisted that she was feeling better, and she sounded terrific on the phone. I remember laughing as I heard her adorable four-year-old daughter, Abbey, in the background doing cheers and Kim telling me, a former cheerleader, that she had become “cheerleader crazy.” At one point, she had to put the phone down and tell her daughter to pipe down. She seemed filled with energy—she sounded terrific. She insisted that I send pictures of the wedding and we spent the remainder of the conversation talking about my crazy family and wedding arrangements.
I arrived in Atlanta two days before the wedding and was thrust into a whirlwind of activity. I remember wanting to get into my car and drive out to Conyers to see her—but between my completely irrational mother, who was overwhelmed and snapping at everyone, the politics of my future in-laws who wouldn’t stand for sitting near each other, my sister who “forgot” she was to be my maid of honor, and my dad who wasn’t sure he’d be able to come since he had a patient emergency, well, you get the idea. I had entered wedding madness. And wouldn’t it have been fun to later have a laugh and tell Kim all about it.
