My friend died last week. Her departure wasn’t sudden, nor was it a surprise. Her departure was not even something she wished to prevent. In fact, she had told more than once that she’d considered having “Do Not Resuscitate” tattooed across her chest. You see, the first day I met her, she announced to me that she was “92-years old” in her Western Alleghenies’ accent, nodding her head to emphasize the accomplishment of having reached that age, not yet perishing due to illness, accident, or making someone mad enough to just outright kill you. That was almost three years ago, and the last time I saw her, I’m positive she’d she still have insisted that she was 92 if asked. I’m not quite sure of her actual age, but I’m very sure that the number of years mattered not at all, simply as a way to mark time, as if the creaks in our joints and the creases in our faces weren’t enough to remind us that youth had fled.
Every one of those 92 (give or take) years she had lived, I’m sure, would ‘ve proven to weave a tale worth telling, but she’d long grown weary of sharing much of her own personal history. She’d been married three times (“And not a one of ’em worth anything.” direct quote), had babies, been a nurse, borne loss, accepted more heartache than most people can withstand, and still, she could sit and talk about music, theatre, or nothing at all. Despite, or maybe because of the pain to which she could bear witness, this tiny woman whose life had spanned nearly a century wore her faith as her armor, and she left me in awe.
She told me that she was ready to go Home to her Lord and Savior more than a year ago. In her pragmatic way, she began tying up the loose ends she saw trailing behind her here on Earth, and when there were no more strings left to tidy, she went Home. I didn’t get to see her before she left; I was too sick. She’d have understood, but it was my heart that was left wide open with that ache that reminds you that no matter how many times you look up, that person you’re missing, well, they’re just never going to walk back in the room again. My lovely friend received the blessing of going Home, going to that place we inherently know we belong and literally are dying to go, but the being left behind just, well, sucks.
Being the one left behind, whether by death, divorce, or any other means of separation, when you didn’t get to make the choice (or even sometimes if you did), can drive that double-edged blade called choice, destiny, fate, or simply time straight into the heart of you, twist the handle until the sharpened steel edge hollows out the very core of you, then delight in striking the match that lights the fire that conflagrates what remains of you leaving you to wonder if you ever existed at all, if the heart you thought beat in your chest might not just have simplybeen ash from the very start. And the questions echo up and down empty hallways: How many times do I start again? How many corners do I turn? How many times do I say goodbye? Or maybe say nothing at all because I didn’t get the chance? And those words I never said are acid eroding the pieces of me that I thought I knew.
Or maybe that’s just me.
In the pre-dawn, Rosie and I stood in the April chill. I listened as the forest started to awaken, my nose twitched with that loamy delicious Spring smell peculiar to the Blue Ridge. The sky, streaked in that glorious tint somewhere between pink and orange (but calling it salmon feels like sacrilege because salmon in nasty), spread out as a gift newly opened, and I closed my eyes and pictured my sweet friend’s face. Rosie pulled on her leash until I opened my eyes to see my little beagle staring up at me. As if she knew what I was thinking, my little dog tried to lope across the yards from my back patio to where my dear friend had lived. And for the first time since she’d gone Home, I felt tears cascade down my cheeks. And I knew those tears weren’t for her but for me.
The Unexpected Life 