When the phone rang yesterday, and I saw a Maryland phone number, I really should have had more of a clue. No one has called me with a 301 area code in a LONG time. The voice at the other end of the line was one that I recognized immediately, and I was still dumb as a rock as to what was going on.
As she started to speak, the light bulb slowly grew brighter. Of course this was bad news. Why did I answer the phone? As this blast from my past dropped the bomb on me, my mind flashed back (see wavy "dreamscape" lines here as we travel back in time.)
Many years ago, I went through a very, very dark time. I had given birth to my third child, only 15 months after the birth of my second. I guess my hormones were at critical mass, because I crashed into a very deep post-partum depression. It was ugly, to say the least, and I'm still not sure how my marriage survived that year.
It was during the year of me swimming through a mental and emotional mire of mud and muck that an angel came alongside me. In fact, there were several angels, but one stood out above the rest. The reason for her being so much....more, I suppose...was that she didn't try to make me "better." She was going through her own battles, and she simply understood me. She would call me up and share gruesome details from her own warped mind. We laughed together at horribly morbid thoughts, and eventually, we cried together over the seemingly wasted year.
As often happens in our fast-paced, career-driven American culture, we moved away, then so did my friend. We lost touch for many years, except for the occasional Christmas card. We briefly reconnected on a social network site, but when she disappeared, I procrastinated about following up.
When the voice on the other end of the phone said, "She took her own life," my heart deflated. She left nine children, six of whom are still at home. I am angry....at her, at me, at her friends in her home town. How could she? How could I? How could they?
So, today: Here I sit, trying to be busy enough not to think about the horror of it all. I spread thick globs of St. Andre' cheese on hunks of crusty French bread and wish like crazy that our church used real wine for communion. I could really use a glass right now.
