Love Stays

Susan Estrich on Oct 10, 2026

The one thing you can't make when you get old is old friends.

Pam Fleischaker was one of my oldest friends. We met more than 40 years ago as two young political activists. She commuted from Oklahoma City to help run the Democratic Platform Committee for Geraldine Ferraro. She was a charter member of the "A Team," a band of feminists determined to get a woman on the ticket. She raised money for women candidates, fought for abortion rights and gun control -- not easy things to do in Oklahoma. She edited her local paper. She raised money for countless candidates. She wrote a book, raised two magnificent children, supported her husband in business and politics. She was gifted in the art of friendship. And boy, was she fun.

She did all this while living with the burden of serious heart disease. She had two heart transplants. The air in her beloved Santa Fe made it hard for her to breathe. She used oxygen. When her doctors in Los Angeles, who gave her her second heart, told her she couldn't fly -- meaning she couldn't go home to Santa Fe ever again -- she made her home near me, in Santa Monica. We went to lunch every Saturday. When she couldn't walk, she used a walker. Then a wheelchair. I would have cried with frustration. When she was bedridden, she told me how much she loved her gentle caregivers, especially Cheree. "I love Cheree," she told me, and Cheree loved her too. How could you not?

Just kill me, I thought to myself, as she struggled to sip water from a straw. She had no such thoughts. It could be days or weeks, they told us when she went home to hospice in Santa Monica. It was not days or weeks. She fought to stay alive.

I went to visit her every day. We ate lemon ice together every afternoon, our own little ritual. Sometimes I just held her hand as she napped. But when I asked her how she was, her answer was always the same. "I'm fine." I was the one to complain.

And how she loved her family: her husband David, who sat in his own wheelchair by her bed, discussing what they would eat for dinner, her handsome son Joey, the magnificent Emily, her devoted sister Missy. She lived for them, and for the four grandchildren she lived to meet.

I once asked her, towards the end, when times were tough, how she did it. One small step at a time, she told me. Her cheesy eggs that Cheree made; her daily calls after she ate her eggs to Joey and Emily and Missy; the latest pictures on the iPad of the grandchildren; her visits with me and our lemon ice; a nap; black pasta or crab claws that Shep would bring for her and David and maybe something on TV. One small step at a time. Gratitude for life, for Dr. Kobashigawa and the team at Cedars, for her family and friends.

I am a writer, but sometimes words escape me. Poetry is better. She asked Emily to send her the framed 1934 needlepoint that hung in her office in Santa Fe, so she could give it to me. It is part of a poem by Henry van Dyke.

"Hours fly,

Flowers die;

New days,

New ways,

Pass by!

Love stays."

That is the first stanza, the one that now hangs in my office. This is the second stanza that Princess Diana's sister read at her funeral.

"Time is

Too Slow for those who Wait,

Too Swift for those who Fear,

Too Long for those who Grieve,

Too Short for those who Rejoice;

But for those who Love,

Time is not."

Love stays.

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.