The Heart Of Life Is Good

It was the evening of my mother's memorial service. The morning before I awakened to an empty house. Dosed on Ambien I lay in bed on a cool March morning. The golden morning sun filtered through the blinds and focused it's rays in my eyes. Where was my dad? More importantly, why wasn't my mother here anymore?

I lumbered out of bed and timidly opened her bedroom door. While standing there torrents of tears began to cloud my vision. My heart began racing and the last thing I remember is screaming on top of my lungs that I was so alone while staring up at the light blazing through her bedroom skylight. The next thing I knew it was S and I in my bedroom and the memorial service was over.

There she was, my brown sister, sitting crossed legged on the air mattress. We had just endured the most emotional afternoon of my life. I had experienced my one true fear-losing my mother. S had taken a couple days off from law school to sleep on my bedroom floor as I mourned. Her doe black eyes gazed fondly at me. I wasn't sure what to say. We had returned from having dinner with a group of my friends at Fridays.

"Remember when we got lost in Delaware senior year?" she asked playfully.

"Oh my! Yes. Can you believe how naive we were?"

"Sheesh. There we were talking and talking that night and totally got on the wrong Route 95. I remember rambling on and on about Marty while you remarked here and there that it was for the best." she said with a hushed giggle.

"Oh yea. That was some night. I remember freaking because I had my 8:00 a.m. upper management class that I refused to ever miss. Why the heck wouldn't I miss that stupid class anyways?" I responded exacerbated.

"I don't know. I kept trying to get you to cut class so we could go do something but you were so dutiful. You never ever missed a class" she said.

"We were always getting so lost. We were completely clueless about everything, especially boys. Did we even know what sex was?" I responded.

She pursed her lips for a moment. Suddenly her giggling turned to absolute laughter. "I really can't believe us. Remember when Brian told you all guys want sex from you?...You were so upset. You came back to school that weekend completely mortified."

"Oh yes" I laughed completely and couldn't stop.

"Didn't he say that after driving you home from a prayer meeting?"

I nodded, lauging too hard to respond.

"Of course I was mortified too because I thought guys were just saying hello to me because they wanted to get to know me. Imagine my shock!" she continued while laughing.

"How bout the time you came home from the Asian American Club dance declaring you had finally kissed a boy and you didn't even know him!" I said in hysterics.

"Oh my. How embarrassing was that! I freaked for days because you asked me immediately why I kissed someone I didn't know."

We began to laugh uncontrollably. There we were, sprawled out on her air mattress laughing over all our naive college thoughts. It was amazing how naive and utterly clueless two women could be. There we were, top students with no life experience. That was when we were 21. There we were at 24 burying my mother. Life experience was coming in the form of buying a cemetary plot and picking a casket. I'll never forget that moment, as we lay there, releasing the horrors of the afternoon into our laughter and into the chill of that March night. Our laughter knit us together into a bond closer than sisterhood. We had lived through pain and would see more before the year was out. Two months later she would call me to say her bobba (father) had passed away of a sudden heart attack. That evening, we once again had the laugh of a lifetime.

Thank you S for always laughing; for reminding me to keep my chin up. You are my first true friend. The first to notice me for me. To look beyond the blunt, opinionated girl and see something beautiful and then remind me of it time and again. Best wishes for your health and happiness always.

"But then the circle of your firends will defend the silver lining" - John Mayer taken from his song "The Heart of Life is Good".