Another Eulogy

I want to start out by thanking everyone who wrote with such encouraging comments and emails. I was on the phone with an old friend this afternoon talking about the overwhelming kindness I have found in the adoption community, that you people are the "most stellar of the stellar." So. Thank you. I cried at nearly every message you sent.

Today has been spent in a fog. I woke up this morning to tragic news about a friend from college. She was a fellow English major. She would always proof every paper I wrote the night before it was due, appearing at my dorm with her red pen. I could still pick her handwriting out of a line-up. She told me once that she thought I was a better writer than she but that she was a better editor. I owe my GPA to her red pen. She also was the only student holding the key to the extra office belonging to the English department, and on late nights if I needed a computer (in the olden days, many students had to use the one lab on campus to write their papers), this trustworthy rule-follower would let me into the office to work, making sure I kept the light dim and the door locked. She always wanted to help a friend even if she could have gotten in a little trouble for it.

She was statuesque, beautiful, doe-eyed. She was somber a lot of the time, a deep thinker, yet funny and quick to laugh. We lost track of each other after we graduated though I often thought about her. When I had dinner with my college roommate in New York this January, we spent a part of the night talking about this friend, wondering how she was, wanting to get in touch. We both tried. Neither of us heard anything.

Her funeral was today. She lost a fight with depression. I was beyond stunned when I heard the news. Still in my pajamas, I went outside to sit on our deck and cry. All day I've thought about her, have emailed and talked on the phone with our college friends. I heard about the funeral. I'm so sad we lost touch for all those years.

A lot of our friends have been posting old photos of her on facebook today. In one album posted by an alumni in Sweden, I saw our friend in a beautiful skirt, black top, her long hair pinned up, sitting in my great aunt's apartment. I gasped. I had completely forgotten this moment. She was there for a wedding shower I hosted with my grandmother and Sister's help, the same Sister who just passed on last week. I couldn't believe it.

Today was a sad day, and I didn't mind that it was raining.