A Whole New Ballgame

My first call is to Julie, the friend Toni and I grew up in our careers with before we all flew off in different directions and found the industries that would make us experts at something.  Julie is our Crazy Friend. Everyone has one in some form. Some make you think about taking bail money when you go out. Some make you think about throwing a net over their heads. Some make you wish you could occasionally make your house invisible. Some are a combination of all three.  The jury is still out on Julie.

I tell her what I know, which isn't much. She is as horrified as I was and in a panic about what to do. Nothing seems right. Nothing seems enough. There really isn't a play book for this. I tell her that I will stay in touch with Del and fill her in on details as they trickle in. 

And they do. Painfully slowly and fraught with complications. Planes only fly off the island two days a week. Lyla was an American in a foreign country. The family flew to one place; she went to another. There is something cosmically appropriate that her body went to South Beach. One last party before going home. 

Julie and I decide to connect to attend the viewing. And the funeral. It's is one of those instances where I need to be there for all of it.  

But in the meantime, I plan to visit Toni and Del and bring them some nosh and a shaker of martinis. Del is keeping all the plates in the air and losing his marbles in the process. Toni  won't answer the phone for fear of having to rewind and repeat the past few days events. I need to see her and she needs to see me. The madness of it all is something she and I need to look into each others eyes and understand together. Toni without Lyla is an unimaginable horror.

And I am compelled against my will to thInk of me and Charlotte in the same circumstances. it makes me wince. we mean so much to each other. family you count among your friends. she has made a career out of throwing herself in front of moving trains for me. I have been the What-the-Hell-What's-the-Worst-That-Can-Happen free-spirit for her (hence all the moving trains...) What in the world would we do without each other to roll our eyes to, secretly text about our idiot brother with, scratch our heads together over Estelle's many antics, share private WTF looks over perfectly set holiday dinner tables? to say nothing of the relationships with one another's precious children. We are second mothers to each of them. Fun permissive versions of each other! Who would I talk to all damn day???

And I think of Kate and her sisters. How they can't be separated from each other in other people's minds, or in our own hearts. I remember when Kate lost her brother suddenly. And Joy lost her brother just as tragically a few years later.  Unimaginable losses, made worse by the suddenness, their youth, our not having prepared for or even considered the possibility, even on the remotest of terms. How does anyone go on putting their feet on the floor each day and willing themselves to live another second?

Perhaps it is our time. Our age. Our friends and people we love will start some of these journeys soon. Sick parents. Our own bodies revolting against us. Ailments that don't subside. Maintenance prescriptions. Specialists and special dietary restrictions. Bad feet, bad circulation, high cholesterol, low bone density, hormone replacement, low sex drive, gray hair, sore backs, reading glasses. But losing any one of these people is just not fathomable. 

Or so it is. With Lyla's passing we face the harsh reality that we will someday, maybe sooner than we'd thought, be forever separated from one another. The loss feels like a lost limb; the hollowness aching and concave. 

The game has been changed.