In almost all of my friendships, I’m the more outgoing of the pair. The exception was Amy. We were the same age, yet Amy was more mature, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan. She wrote about fashion and culture, and while on assignment in Paris she adopted a miniature pinscher she christened Cliché. This was the name Dorothy Parker – the patron saint of aspiring female writers in New York – gave to her little dog. 
Amy’s story
Amy was a fresh-faced, corn-fed fashion plate from Indiana, and compared with her, I felt like I just fell off the turnip truck. My family has been rooted in New York City for generations, but she seemed… New Yorkier. 
In online dating you match with someone who likes the same things. I was drawn to Amy because we disliked the same things. She hated whining, sentimentality, hypocrisy, the inability to take a joke, and, above all, dishonourable behaviour.        
We bonded early through a shared grudge against an editor who’d done each of us a bad turn. I got mad. Amy screwed up her courage and got that woman’s job. Instead of letting that broad stand in her way, Amy paved a road right over her. I always thought of myself as bold, but Amy was bolder.
We also shared bad luck in the health department. I had a neurological condition, and Amy was diagnosed with breast cancer. Our hospitals were across the street from each other. We would crank-call each other’s rooms and play tricks on our medical teams, such as wearing fake mustaches to get a rise out of the interns. We hid remote control fart machines in each other’s rooms to mess with doctors and visitors. You could say we were brave, or spitting in death’s eye, but we didn’t know any other way. In this manner, our friendship grew.                
Unfortunately friendship wasn’t the only thing growing. I discovered that I had tumours on my uterus right around the time Amy learned that the cancer had spread to her brain.                
We kept writing, and we pushed each other – not to be brave, or have courage, because that wasn’t how we talked. We encouraged each other to suck it up and not be a chicken about our illnesses. Amy edited the style section for our nation’s paper of record from a hospital bed; she had no time for chickens. She was also the most generous and inspiring editor I ever worked for. 
Close friends do what’s called “mirroring” – they copy each other’s behaviour. Sometimes this is bad, like when you drink too much because your friends do. And sometimes it’s positive. Amy was my badass friend, who dealt with illness like a boss. In mirroring her I gained the toughness I needed to deal with my rapidly compounding health problems. I like to think Amy mirrored me too, that part of me that seizes opportunities and flies when the window is open; she met and married the love of her life when she was in remission for the first time. Call it carpe diem.                    
Amy and I endured the acute phase of illness together. Two decades later, the chronic phase of my illness is ongoing. Amy’s is not. She died of metastasizing brain cancer four years after her first diagnosis.
Dying in increments
In honour of Amy, I won’t be a chicken about what happened. It was unbearably sad. She died in increments, lost pieces of herself, bit by agonizing bit. First she couldn’t hold a pen to edit or write or even scrawl a few words. Her vision went, and she couldn’t see the beautiful clothes on which she’d spent her professional life as a groundbreaking fashion critic. Then she lost the ability to speak, to deliver the caustic bon mots that had always delighted me. Then she lost consciousness, and then one day she was gone. Cliché the dog died right after Amy; she’d lost too much too. 
I lived, and I live my life not just according to Stoic virtues but according to her example. Seneca tells us that when a friend dies, “We may weep, but we must not wail.” (Moral Letters, 63). I think for anyone, Stoic or not, grief is inevitable, but I did not let it overwhelm me. Amy wouldn’t have wanted that, anyway. 
Remember to live
I will never forget Amy, though. Again I follow Seneca’s wisdom: 
A man of sense… should continue to remember, but should cease to mourn. - Seneca, Moral Letters, 99
I will always remember her courage.
Memento mori, Amy. Memento vivere.

Karen Duffy is a producer, actress, and former MTV VJ. Her latest book on Stoicism. Wise Up (https:// amzn.to/3PpLv5D) is published by Seal Press.

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