A thought I had a while ago.....

Thought 4: Angels
I have a friend named Liz. She is a recent acquisition to my life, but a very valuable one. She recently told me a story of hers, which I’d like to put in writing. It’s one of those stories that changes you, makes you think, makes you want to live your life. And if you are smart, you will see the value in it, as, I am sure, Liz has.
Liz has had an extraordinary life and, at only twenty seven, is an old soul. Her experiences have made her so.
Liz is a mild, quiet woman and, I can imagine as a girl, was nothing more than a wall flower desperate to bloom. Her silence can’t be mistaken for lack of substance, though. When she is quiet, looking at you, listening to you talk, she is thinking. Always. She is listening, absorbing and processing.
In her first year of high school, she was not a particular attraction, not an ugly girl, but hidden within herself and her fears. I suspect part of that was her struggle with her sexuality. Liz came out in her early twenties and has done nothing but bloom vibrant, inspiring colours since. She also has two older sisters who always overshadowed her, fighting for her, using her against each other while Liz struggled to keep sanity in her life.
In her first year of high school, when she wanted to do nothing more than melt into the walls, the most popular boy decided he liked her. Not a crush mind you. But he befriended Liz in such a way that she will never forget.
His name was John and he changed her life. John was the type of boy who just accepted everyone, thought diversity was fascinating. He never saw groups, but individuals struggling to become accepted. And he accepted them. All of them. And, in turn he was loved, by everyone. But most of all, by Liz.
Liz met John in drama class. She had taken it to help her find her confidence and John had taken it as an outlet for his. John was the most popular kid in school, mainly because he just liked everyone. Was easy going, laughed, and could make anyone feel comfortable in the most uncomfortable situations.
When the time came in class to choose a partner for exercises, when everyone was eyeing John with the hopes of being in his light, his beacon turned to Liz and he tugged her arm and said “Common Liz, you’re my partner.”
“I kept thinking, ‘what does he want me for when he could be partners with someone cool,’” she told me one night over beers. She put her hand to her breast, eyes wide, “Me!” She exclaimed.
I laughed. I could see why, but sometimes what others see as the most obvious things about ourselves are the most obscure to us.
John would tease Liz, make her blush, but was always pulling her to his side. “Common Liz, are you coming?” Was his mantra. He made her comfortable, made her feel important and loved. Liz, I think for the second time in her life, felt the unconditional, restful love of another. The first was her father.
They became inseparable and the entire time Liz kept wondering when the dream would stop, when would John realize I’m just me, just Liz? When would he find someone cooler to hang out with?
But John didn’t. Liz was enough for him. Liz filled whatever he was looking to fill. They took the bus home together and would run down the road together, racing. When class would let out, John was always waiting at Liz’s locker for her. They’d walk to classes together, talking, feeling comfortable with one another. A comfort not often found in those tumultuous years of high school.
The following semester, they arranged their schedules so they only had one class apart. They sat beside each other, would work together. Always.
And all the while, Liz kept wondering when the dream would end. When he’d realize. I think perhaps she felt like a sham, like a fraud. She was afraid someone would slip him the memo: Liz was really a geek, one of the losers.
She told me, over her beer, how he made her feel. He changed her, made her feel good. Always wanted her around.
“Wanted me,” she told me. She looked down to her beer. I knew she must have been remembering. A shadow of pain flickered across her face and was gone as fast as it came.
“He would always loop his arm in mine and said ‘Are you coming Liz?’ when everyone else wanted to be with him.”
“John was very curious,” she said. “You couldn’t keep him down. You couldn’t tell him no.”
I could hear the love in her voice. Love for a memory that was fourteen years old. It was still there.
“He told me that he wanted to explore this field. It was close to his house, behind his yard but it was unexplored. So he wanted to explore it.”
“And one night he did,” she said, “John went out to this field. He told me he wanted to check it out. He was curious”
She smiled. I could see the sadness.
“No one could tell him no. He wasn’t rebellious, just curious. The word no meant it held more interest. Why would someone not what him to do something that was boring, you know? This field was where, you know, those hydro generators are. Like 50 000 volts or something.” She waved her hand to emphasize. She looked over my shoulder at nothing.
“It was really fast,” she said. “The volt went through him, something like 100 times the amount needed to kill a human. He was dead instantly.”
I kept still. I didn’t want her to stop. It was like I had just come across a deer, and that deer spotted me, its eyes locked on me, unmoving. In those moments you don’t dare move a muscle, you don’t even breathe.
I didn’t know if she needed to tell me. If it was cathartic for her. Or if she found trust in me. Or if she had just had too many beers. But I felt awed. I didn’t want to make a move, make a sound, say the wrong thing. I wanted her to tell me and I knew it hurt her. I felt like I was peeking in through a window to someone else’s life. Like I’d been given a day-pass.
“I remember the last time I saw him. I was the last kid in school to see him. He said ‘see ya tomorrow’ to me. Just like that,” she shrugged one shoulder. “Just see ya. And then he was gone. He’s gone.”
She took a sip of her beer. She purses her lips when she thinks. Just slightly. A habit I’ve noticed.
“It was like the floor had caved in on me and I was falling. My heart was broken and I kept thinking, ‘no this isn’t right. This can’t be right. I just saw him. John is alive.’
“There was, of course, counseling in the main office for me, and I was there. I didn’t comprehend. John gone. John gone. And all the while, my sisters and my friends were racing around the entire school looking for me. They knew he meant that much to me. ‘Where was Liz?’ was what everyone thought as soon as they heard the news. They didn’t know what I’d do, how I’d react. If I was ok. And no one could find me.”
My heart broke for her. My beer was warm. Untouched.
“I fell into a huge depression after that. I cried a lot. I was angry a lot. I didn’t yell or take fits, but I didn’t talk.”
Sometimes, when you have children, you’d rather hear them scream and yell and hear them tell you how much they hate you, how much you don’t understand them, how they wanted to leave, rather than take silence from them. Silence leaves you to your own thoughts, and when someone you love is hurting, lost in their own despair, the silence reminds you of how far they are from you. That you can’t reach them. The yelling means you can reach them. Grab on. Pull them close. It’s like an anchor.
But death is unknown to most of us. Even though it happens to everyone, and everyone experiences the death of a loved one at some point, it is still uncharted territory. Watching your child deal with the death of a loved one is like being lost at sea.
And Liz was lost at sea, oceans away from her family. Oceans away from reality.
She was looking at me. She sighed a big, accepting breath.
“And then my dad died. He was really sick and really shouldn’t have been a surprise when he died. But you can never prepare yourself. No matter how sick they are.”
The waiter came to our table, breaking us out of our thoughts, back to the boisterous bar.
“Can I get you ladies another?” She had a slightly used look to her, but she was pleasant.
I nodded, unable to find my voice, and pointed both to Liz and myself. She nodded and left.
“I think I cried everything I had when John died and had nothing left for when my dad died. I didn’t cry once during the entire thing. Not once. I wanted to, I felt it. But I just didn’t. Couldn’t.”
I wanted to tell her I knew what it was like not to be able to cry anymore. But I felt that would have sounded trite in her circumstance.
The waiter came back with our beers, cold and amber.
“I loved my dad so much. I was his girl. I didn’t live with him when he and my mom split up, but I spent every other weekend with him and we had so much fun. But when he got sick, he wasn’t the same. I think it was the pain he was in. It made him short with everyone. He’d yell at everything. He yelled a lot at my sisters, but not at me. He never yelled at me.”
“Do you think he favored you?” I asked.
“I don’t like to think so, but yeah, maybe he did.”
“It was just a few years ago, late at night, that I finally cried about my dad. Suzy had no idea what was going on, but she just held me. I cried for hours. I had such a headache after.” A small smile curved her mouth.
What does one say? What can one say after that? I felt inadequate. I felt like I needed to tell her thank you. I wanted to tell her thank you for telling me. It had changed me, I won’t forget it.
After high school, John and her dad passing, Liz received acceptance to Queen’s University. Her mother worried about her, was worried because she had not fully come back to the Liz she knew. I think perhaps, Liz would never be the same.
But Liz decided she wanted to go and she did. She excelled in her studies, found friends, found herself and that resful comfort she had lost back in that field.
“It finally dawned on me why I didn’t like dating guys, why sex with guys was uncomfortable to me and why I ended up just avoiding them altogether.” She told me. “I made up my mind to tell my family on this particular day. If I set a date for myself and figured, if I had a particular date, then I’d hold myself accountable for telling them I was gay. So I did.” Her long finger was tracing the rim of her glass. The music in the bar became louder.
“My mom was totally cool with it.” She laughed. “The fact that her daughter was a lesbian was ok but the fact that she’s an atheist is not. Figure that one out!”
I laughed. It did seem ridiculous.
“My one sister was also fine with it, but my other still thinks I have a disease. That I’ll be ‘cured’ one day.” She rolled her eyes. “Right.” She said.
Liz continued to tell me of her summer abroad. She spent a summer in Bolivia, trying to do humanitarian work, building homes, lives, trying to give hope but only being met with corruption and denial from the Bolivian government. To her, this was unacceptable and just a random occurance. No government could possibly let their citizens live in such squalor.
“I think I was completely niaeve. But I also think I’m waking up and realizing reality.” She said.
She also spent a summer in Equador, where she met Suzy. I have never met Suzy. She is now living in Sweden, trying to obtain Canadian citizenship so she can come over and live with Liz. They have been together for five years but apart for the past two. But their love for one another keeps them going. Thousands of miles apart, they still know the other is out there, in the world and that one day, if they play their cards right, they just might get to merge their worlds. It makes me sad to think.
Liz eventually made it to Queen’s School of Law and it was during her articling that I met her. She has ideals of putting the law to humanitarian use. Liz is one of those people who wants to change the world. I hope she does. But I hope she doesn’t change along with it.
So there we sat, two women from completely different walks of live, two different views of the world, sharing a beer on a bitter cold night, enjoying just the company of someone to listen. And at that moment, I would have rather be no where else. I felt like John.
“You know,” I said, tentative. “What John saw in you, why he wanted to be with you all the time. It’s not hard to see.”
I looked down to my beer. When I looked up, she was smiling, her face warm. She was looking directly at me.
“You are one of those people, Liz, who everyone wants to be around. I see you as one of those people.”
Her smile widened. She has a very kind smile. “I see the same in you.” I knew she was being truthful. I felt privileged. Rich.
“Maybe John is one of those people,” I said “who was meant to come into your life only for a short time. Maybe you needed something that only he could give you, and when he did, he had to go. You’ll never forget him. Don’t ever forget him.”
She was quiet. We both sipped our beers, lost in our own thoughts. We remained silent for a few moments.
“Like angels,” she finally said.
“Yeah, like angels.”