For Absent Friends

For Katie and Suzie
and other friends we lost in the 1970 somethings.
This is my 500th post, a milestone I never thought I would be at.
A funny evolution from
At first, what is a blogger?
Then, why am I a blogger?
Then I am a blogger.
Some of my inspiration and vision from an old Jerry Garcia
verse:
"Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world".

I was here many years before I could really answer the question,
"why did you come to Vermont?"
It was easy to lie about.
Finding out people ask questions sometimes not really
listening
or caring
how you answer.
Eventually, I started to say,
"my roommate said to come to Vermont."
Later, much later,
with an acceptance I thought never possible,
I added,
"and she was killed in a car accident."
I never processed that Suzie was with her.
It was too much to lose in one night, a night I was supposed to be out with them,

I knew Katie's Mom first. She was our school nurse in grade school. She would let me
lay on "the cot" when I got these overwhelming headaches. Sick headaches.
Her gentle voice. Her kind looks. Her confidentiality, a safe harbor.

Katie and I became roommates after I began working as a nurse at
a local hospital. New grad nurse. Katie was an LPN, worked in a nursing home and got burned out,
at a young age (we thought we were old). She took care of private duty people
and worked at the bar.

Suzie was someone I can only remember laughing, a very cute laugh, a joy.
Suzie was so special, and such a secret. I knew her sister better who I had the opportunity to hug this year at the Wildey Theater, what a gift.
The funerals were on the same day. I could not attend Suzie's. It helped in the short run but
not really.

Katie's mom called the morning after.
Katie and Suzie tried to get me to call in. Friday night. I just could not.
Nobody to take my place. I went to work.
They went out.
I never knew where they were going after the bar.

Katie's mom said, "oh my God, no one called you?"
and I felt bad for her as she had to tell me, the little girl on the cot,
that her daughter was gone.
I paced and denied and wondered what to do next.

Within a month I had packed up and made plans to go to Vermont,
a place I had barely heard of in the midwest.
The mountains, "Burlington" was what Katie raved about.
I wanted for us to move there.
I even got license in Vermont.
But Katie kept saying, next year.

Katie sent me here 30 years ago,
and I had no choice but to accept she and Suzie
disappeared
one night,
like other friends I had lost,
seeming too many,
too young.

Suzie, her sweet smile a memory,
a loss, of all she might have been,
all they might have been.

This 500th milestone post is for them.