I'll Be There...

December 2006

I've been thinking about her all day, I fretted. But it was way too late to call her tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough. I hoped. I prayed.

How had this happened? Why her? Why her baby? She's a good person. God wouldn't do that to her. And I know she is strong, but if it hurts me this much, oh, how hard it must be on her!

These thoughts tumbled through my mind, and I wondered if I could sleep. I wanted to go there and be with all of them, but especially to keep an eye on Deb. I knew how I handled my own personal tragedy, and thought maybe, just maybe, I could help her with hers.

But, as much as I loved my Mom, I had seven long years to prepare for her death. And besides, moms are older and are supposed to die, so you prepare for that possibility all your adult life. Deb's tragedy? No way to prepare for that. It was so unexpected, so surreal, the kind of stuff you watch on that movie channel that always makes you cry and you need a box of Kleenex and then you feel like an idiot for being so darn sappy about a stupid movie.

Deb's tragedy was real. As much as I wanted to believe otherwise, the news was so bad that I knew that it wouldn't have a happy ending. Deb was going to lose her grandbaby, her precious two year-old bundle of joy that they waited so long to welcome into this world. No matter how hard we prayed, I think that deep down we knew that God had other plans for Joey.

She had been so good about keeping me updated on what was happening, so when I didn't hear from her, and she wasn't answering her phone, my heart sank to my stomach. This could not be good. I usually enjoyed the ride on the causeway from North Padre Island to my school in Corpus Christi, but that day I didn't even notice the waves and the birds.

I arrived at school early that Monday. Upon entering my room, I turned on the Christmas lights, hoping it would change my growing feeling of doom. I tried to write lesson plans and get ready for the day, all the while anxiously watching the clock. When it finally read eight o'clock, I was relieved. Good, she lives in North Carolina and I'm in Texas She would be awake by now.

She answered fairly quickly. I was afraid to ask her what I knew I had to, needed to ask. “How's Joey?” I didn't think I really wanted Deb to answer the question, but I knew I couldn't function that day without knowing.

I heard her take a deep breath. She sounded so calm, that I saw my surreal dream coming true, right there in my science lab. Suddenly everything around me stood still as I held the phone next to my ear, waiting for what I knew was coming.

“Joey died just a little while ago…”

Chapter 1

A Long Time Ago

I can't remember not knowing Deb. She was the sister I never had. We were always together, even though we lived several blocks and one major road away from each other. I have known her longer than I've known my baby brother, and now that I was approaching sixty, I realized just how long that was.

We have argued for decades over how old we were when we met. Being a year older, I have decided that my memory is better on the subject, since she was so much younger than me. I was two and Deb was only one when her grandmother and my neighbor's grandmother, who were friends from way back, enrolled the neighborhood toddlers into swimming lessons at the downtown YWCA. Our life-long friendship started in that pool….

…Don't get me wrong; we have always fought, as sisters often do. We have fought over stupid little things when we were young, once over one of her boyfriends, and even in later years, over politics. But there has not been one other single person with whom I have poured out my heart, cried with, hugged, and laughed with more than Debbie.

We don't even have that much in common in our lives, except our total acceptance of our friendship. We're often so much in synch that every time a popular greeting card company ran an ad on television, one of us would pick up the phone and call the other. We'd have a good laugh because the other had done the same thing but got a busy signal. We have been together in person or in spirit for every family celebration and tragedy.

I wondered how this latest tragedy of Joey's untimely death would affect her. Can she survive it? Can I help her, even though I would never, ever, have this kind of hurt in my own heart? I did not know, but I was certain that I needed to get to North Carolina.