Am I done grieving my friends now? Can I write again if I am? Will I write again if I am? No, I am not done and maybe, just maybe I can write again, I dunno...
I have been angry and sad and mad... at God? No... He took them to be with Him. He does what He does. I don't question Him...much. And when I do, He lets me know He is who He is and that "It is what it is" What? you thought someone else made up that saying?...Try and change any little thing He is in charge of, just go ahead... I dare you...We won't get those answers until we come face to face with Him our very selves, now will we?
So why am I still so upset? And why is Facebook such a blessing and a curse? I have the answer to that one, yes I do...
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I was at work one day and my sister called and told me that Donna had died. She saw it in her messages on Facebook and it was sent by her daughter, I now know... I knew she would never joke about anything like that, so I immediately had a meltdown, right there, very softly in my cubby. Not so softly though that my friend did not come running to see what had happened. "What? When? How?" but I had no answers to any of these questions.
I was very kindly taken to an empty office by my friend where I proceeded to call Donna's daughter, her sister and then her mom, all in SC. I sat in that office for 3 long hours and never received a return call, (although Donna's daughter did send a message on Facebook later). Three long hours. I called Dee and told her and she was so sorry. We were all friends since we were in 7th grade "My God, what happened?" I had no answer. I called Denise, who had been Donna's roommate at one time after high school and they had remained friends and kept in touch and I was sure she would know. She was stunned and started making phone calls of her own. She would get no information either and we kept in touch for several days hoping one of us would hear something. In an ironic twist of fate, Denise herself passed away within the next several months and again we found out through Facebook. Her daughter apparently sent an E-message to my sister that showed up almost a year later. Strange, but true...
Within the next few days, a service had been arranged according to the message we got. It is still blurry to me to this day though. Cee found the obituary online soon after but when final ... I did not have time to get there for services and to this day, I don't know if she was buried, cremated or what? Hmm...Meanwhile I had sent a plant with Daisies and had posted some pictures to her
Now I had not lived near her for many, many years. She had lived with me and my husband and our first baby and she loved being Aunt Donna. She adored her and helped me in every way she could. She moved in with Denise after that and her world became "complicated" and she would soon move away to SC where part of her family had already moved. They were originally from there and had gone back and forth for all the summers all through school and we were dedicated pen-pals for all those years...all those years...
So I lie awake and think "What happened?" Here's the craziest part; we were close, really close... We lived 4-5 blocks from each other on the same street from 7th grade through 12th grade and our parents were there many, many years later. Her parents still own that home and come down for the Winters. On Saturdays, we took turns and we got up early and met each other half way and then walked back together to whichever house we chose to clean first and then we went and cleaned the other house. We each had sisters, but this is how we did our chores, together...We were in each other's family homes all the time.
We loved The Monkees and we watched every show and bought all the LPs (albums) with our babysitting money. My dad drove us to Miami to see them-our first concert! My sister Cee and Dee went too and we all wore "micro-mini" dresses and more or less got a lot of unwanted attention from some very "touchy-feely" boys there. Oddly enough, Jimi Hendrix was the opening act and that was a great story to tell for years to come.. Most people thought we were crazy for screaming "We want The Monkees" while Jimi Hendrix played Purple Haze. Years later, Cee and I actually met Mickey Dolenz and he told the same story, the same way and it was very bittersweet to meet him without Donna.
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We were women of the 70s and we loved our clothes. Poor as church mice, but well dressed thanks to sewing skills learned in Home Ec class. We sewed a lot of our own clothes and we had Big Sister hand me downs. Donna always had a new pair of Bass Weejuns each year that she got in SC before school started and Cee and I were secretly jealous of those shoes. We had Latisse purses and Gant shirts and Villager skirts, We were Carnaby Street, Twiggy makeup wearing, psychedelic print obsessed fashionistas! I even cut my hair like Twiggy. I was tall and skinny and a major Twiggy Wannabe. And Donna was maybe ONE size bigger than me and always thought she was a chubby girl. I was only skinny because I ate tomato and mayo sandwiches almost every day. Lunch meat was a special occasion at my house and we all loved fried bologna sandwiches and made that for lunch at Donna's (5 kids) or we went to Linda's ( 5 kids) around the corner. Why was it that the more kids a family had, the more food they always had? plenty to share, always. I somehow ended up at Dee's house (4 kids) around dinner and Mama Davis would sit me down for supper with them quite often. We had 3 kids in my family and three skinny ones at that. My brother and I refused to eat liver (once a week) and snuck it to our dog Rebel or my sister Cee and they would oblige and so: one less meal a week for me and my brother!
Back to our clothes, though. When I say we were obsessed, I mean obsessed! It was better than LSD, which was popular and very scary in the 60s and the 70s. We knew kids who “dropped acid” but we got "high" shopping for psychedelic fabrics at Zayre's. My brother always said I was "naturally high" and sweet. I think in hindsight it was his way of telling me not to do drugs…
We used to sing in Donna's bathroom because it had great acoustics and our hairbrushes made the best microphones, too. Not many people knew what a truly beautiful voice Donna had... I just wanted to be her backup singer, that was all. She sang "High and Mighty" at a church function once and it was like an angel was singing. I would never forget it. I remember she felt pressured by her family to sing and I went along for support. She was always shy around a lot of people, but never with any of us. She knew she was safe with us. We all went to the Baptist church together each Sunday. My dad would drop us off with Dee and Donna would already be there because she had to go to Sunday school. Her whole family went every single Sunday. We went when we went and Dee and I were baptized together, but Donna had done that long before. She “grew up” in church. To this day, I drive by that same Baptist church and drive those same streets that we walked as well. Thankfully, it was there in church, we learned that if we came "just as I am" to meet Jesus, that we would all spend eternity together someday... The Doobie Brothers were right because "Jesus was just alright, oh yeah"
I remember one day Cee and I met up with Donna for a walk. We walked all over West Hollywood, which kept us thinner and healthier. On one particular day, in one of the most regrettable moments of my life, I made some dumb comment about Donna's Blue Toile Butterfly Shorts. What was I thinking? She was so hurt, she stomped off and went home. And then my sister and I did not know what to do... She was crushed and I was crushed that I had crushed her. She was the most sensitive, gentle soul, always, always... Somehow we got through it and we were fast friends again, but it always hurt me that I had hurt her (over Blue Toile Butterfly Shorts? really?) I think I was just jealous and to this day I can see that print and wish I had a pair of those exact shorts...
Dee was and still is my other best friend forever. She shared my world of socialization with the opposite sex and she was my mentor as far as boys were concerned. I did not know how to talk to them, much less become friends with them or actually have a date or a boyfriend. Dee could just look at a guy and say "What a babe" and the next thing you knew, they were dating. She was amazing and I was so very crushed and sad when she moved to a small town about 3 hours away. It may as well have been a million miles away. I will write about Dee another time because there is so much to tell of my other BFF as well. So as crushed as I was when Dee moved, I knew I had Cee and Donna.
Donna was my world of art and fantasy and music and theatre and design and of course, Shakespeare! I knew I could survive the last few years of high school and just be a girl, no need for a boyfriend. We were ok to just be us. We were progressive thinkers and did not even know it,
night at his house on July 4rth. No problem, my sister was there and she was dating his older brother and we had already told our mom that we were spending the night at Donna's and she told her mom we were spending the night at my house. Oldest trick in the book. We all had a Drunken Good time, our very first time. Bittersweet memories, yes bittersweet....
After high school, I was married and Donna lived with my husband and I and our new little baby in a one bedroom apartment downtown. We would drag out a mattress onto the floor each night and make it up for her to sleep. She would keep her money in a little chest and my husband (who also very much enjoyed her company) well, he would "make" her buy us a pizza at least once a week and if she hesitated, he would "threaten" her with a "mule bite"
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| Now, a Mule Bite was a way of grabbing the knee so that it would either really, really hurt or really, really tickle and she would always "give in" and get out the cash! It was more or less a game they played, because we would never take a penny for room and board while she was with us. After that she moved in with Denise for a while and eventually ended up in SC, where she met and married Randy many years later and had her own baby girl named after her husband and me: Randi-Marie. The truth is, she had a new life there and I was not aware of her wedding or having the baby until after the blessed events happened. I know she knew I would have come for both, but think she did not want me to feel pressured to make the trips. I never felt hurt by not knowing because, she honored me by naming her little girl with my name. She could do no wrong in my eyes and I could do no wrong in hers. That is the most important truth about our friendship. That, and the fact that we told each other everything... all the joy, all the pain, all the successes, all the failures, all the secrets, good and bad... |
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My husband and I drove to Gainesville when Donna's sister died at age 49. She was crushed and never really got over losing her and I would have felt the same had it been my loss. I wrote a poem "Grief's Door" for her (a la Shakespeare) after that loss. I had no idea this poem would carry me through so many losses of my own. So many that were so loved by me, including Donna. I read it and wonder where I got the words and I can only say the words came from The Good Lord Himself. In some ways, it is more of a prayer than a poem. Donna knew why I wrote it and she loved it and loved me for it...
The last time I talked to Donna was after her cousin from SC called me to tell me that Donna's niece was killed in a tragic highway accident and she was in so much grief that she could not even dial the phone to call me. I will always be grateful that Donna had her cousin contact me. I called right away and when she answered, all either of us could do was sob uncontrollably because the pain was so raw, so deep, so intense.. We began to talk for hours that night...I can still see where I was, what couch I was sitting on, the room I was in, it is all so vivid and clear. I tried to call her several times after that and left her many messages, but her poor heart was crushed again and I knew she would call again when she was ready to talk again, but she never did...and I never knew and still don't know what happened to her and my grief has waxed and waned ever since...
And so I wonder to this day, What in God's name would make Donna's family think that I should not be one of the first people, after her family of course, to be told of her passing? All I can do is forgive them, but can this human heart forget?
I knew more about that girl than possibly anyone. I knew every beauty and every flaw. We told each other everything...everything. And more than that we forgave each other everything and our friendship was the true meaning of "unconditional love". My only solace is that I will see her again someday on that beautiful shore with the others I have loved and lost. And Mother Earth's secrets and heartaches will be no more, because we will be friends to "infinity and beyond"
A beautiful smile to hide the pain...did I ever tell you, you're my hero?...you are the wind beneath my wings...
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