Can You Really Be Friends With An Ex?

[Ginger]

One of my cousins is dying of lung cancer right now. Not deathbed dying yet, but running out of options. Her ex-husband has been wonderful the whole time she's been sick. She always wanted to visit NYC and he took her on a vacation there with their girls. It is tender, what they have now.

I also know a friend of a friend who has a degenerative disease and her life is very compromised now. She had moved to be near her mother, and now her ex-husband bought a house near her, so he is in the neighborhood, as well.

In the town where my dad grew up, I woman I knew a little through their church was dying, and her ex-husband from decades back, moved in with her and nursed her to the end.

None of these were situations were about getting back together.

I know if anything happened to my ex, the main one, the one I lived with for ten years, I would be there. Her current partner is jealous of me; it hurts that we can't be friends and I don't think it will happen—but if it did, if she needed me, I would be there.