And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. -Excerpt from the poem "When Great Trees Fall" by Maya Angelou
1.
The first time I came to experience death intimately, I was 12 years old. I was sitting on the assigned spot on the floor of our middle school gym waiting for P.E. to start. Anna Kozierski, who usually sat in front of me, had gotten her period and bled onto the gym floor our last time there. Today, she was conspicuously missing and some of the boys were still talking about it. “Yo, you next,” one of them snickered, pointing at me. Before I could reply, the principal came onto the loudspeaker. “Good morning 7th graders. “You think you’re hella funny, huh? ” I said, flipping off the kid as he continued to taunt me. “I have some sad news,” the Principal continued. “One of your classmates, Deanna Parker, has passed away. Her memorial service will be held this Friday at noon at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church.” The whole room seemed to turn in unison toward me. “Oh shit, ain’t that your homegirl?” asked one of the boys. “Yo, she finna cry!” said the other. All I could think about at that moment was how I wished that Anna were there, her tall lanky body shielding me from the million eyes waiting with bated breath for me to do something. To cry, to run out, to do whatever it is you’re supposed to do when you find out one of your dearest friends has died. I did none of those things, I just sat there and stared at a speck on the floor, hoping to avoid the inevitable question, “did you know?” To speak out loud the truth that I was blindsided like everyone else there felt too vulnerable a thing to admit.
2.
I met Deanna when I was 8 years old. I had just moved from India. During lunch one day, I was sitting alone and sticking my hand through the cold chain link fence trying to pick a flower on the other side. “That’s illegal, you know. You can go to jail for picking a California poppy.” I was startled. “It’s only a flower. Anyway, it’s a wildflower. I am not stealing!” I replied. She laughed. “You’re the new girl from India, right? Well, you probably didn’t know. I mean… unless they have California poppies in India and they’re the country’s flower. Which I doubt. In California, you can’t pick wild poppies, they are protected. Don’t worry though, it’s ok, I won’t tell anyone. You wanna play Tetherball?”
3.
Deanna was a runt but what she lacked in size she made up in personality. She never missed an opportunity to play a prank or crack a joke, the master of diffusing awkward moments. Her bubbly exuberance was the perfect balance to my introverted and cautious younger self. It would never occur to most people that she was a foster child, let alone one of five foster children in her home. While many of her foster siblings hoped to be adopted, when given the opportunity, she declined. Ever the eternal optimist, she believed that her birth mother would one day come back for her. Deanna had been placed in foster care shortly after her birth and her mother had never contacted her. She also told me her father lived in Mississippi. This was the same week that M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I was one of our spelling words.
Voltaire once said, “If God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” I suppose the same could be said of biological parents. Perhaps the innate psychological need to protect the sanctity of our birth parents speaks to our own worthiness. If we imagine them to be wonderful and having fallen into difficult (unfathomable, even) circumstances that led them to part ways with us, then surely theirs was the ultimate sacrifice further proving our worth.
4.
Deanna was what we now refer to as immune compromised. During the early 90s, there was no such word, all we were told was that she was “sickly” and in and out of hospitals for weeks at a time. My parents would take me to visit her when possible and we would trade stories. I would catch up with her on the latest school gossip; she, on the hospital gossip, and the nurse who always farted when she came on duty; we’d exchange stickers and those hideous Troll Dolls that were all the rage.
5.
Then we entered middle school and things got more complicated. She continued to miss weeks of school at a time. I began making other friends and adolescence started to strip me of the childlike lightness that once drew us close. When she came back to school she didn’t like being around my new friends, whom she said were not good for me. I accused her of being jealous and though, at the time, I claimed that she was the one who had changed, I suppose I knew all along that it was I who was changing.
I was embarrassed by her singing and dancing to Prince’s “Diamonds and Pearls” out loud in the locker room when the rest of us were listening to TLC and fighting over which one got to be Chilli. “Diamonds and Pearls? Really?” I said annoyed. Diamonds are actually not even that special. They’re literally carbon atoms put under extreme pressure. And pearls? They’re made when an irritant like a grain of sand gets inside an oyster shell. The stupid thing is so annoying the oyster starts spitting mucus crap to cover it which then forms the pearl. This is the song you want to sing?” “What? How did I never know that? See that’s what happens when you miss so much school,” she said winking. “Anyway, you just made me love the song even more,” she said. “I give up, I’m out!” I said, throwing up a peace sign. She was extraordinary in that way, always marching to the beat of her own drum. Which I suppose for me at the time was terrifying because all I wanted was to fit in, to belong. “You shouldn’t have given me that science lesson in the locker room,” she remarked as I was walking out. “You’ll lose your street cred,” she said louder. I chuckled.
6.
One of the last times I went to her home she gave me a flyer for a dance competition and asked me to try out for it. “You can do a routine to that new TLC song you like, I think you’ll win,” she said. “I’ll pass it along to Tina. She’s super pretty, she’ll be perfect for this,” I told her. “You are pretty, that’s why I’m giving you the flyer,” she said, snatching it back lest I pass it along to Tina. Pretty was not an adjective that I was accustomed to being called. Nice, yes. Sweet, maybe. Kind, yes. Pretty, no! I was too skinny, my baggy clothes draped over my coat-hanger body, I was dark-skinned with small breasts and a nose that I had grown to hate. I think as human beings we overcompensate for our perceived inadequacies by taking on other qualities — for me that was people-pleasing. Even now when I talk to some of my middle school friends, I am struck by how many still remember me as “the nicest friend” they had. But Deanna saw past my façade of niceness and yet she somehow also saw beauty when the rest of us saw imperfections. A compliment like hers would have typically elicited a defensive reaction from me because I rarely trusted such praise. But not with D, who was one of only a handful of people I have ever met who speak with the sincerity and candor that only children possess. And though I discounted her views at the time, I never forgot the feeling of being seen as beautiful even when I couldn’t see it for myself. That was one of the last memories I have of her.
7.
A few weeks later when I called her home because she still hadn’t returned to school, her foster sister told me she had moved to Fresno to live with some relatives. I asked if I could call or write to her and I was told “let her get settled and we’ll let you know.” I was angry that she never mentioned this “move” and I noted it as another example of how she had changed. A couple of weeks later, I learned the truth.
8.
At her memorial service, the priest read the following passage from Corinthians, “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." I was struck by this passage because I never got to “see” Deanna one last time, not even that day. I had never been to a “memorial service,” which I thought was just another word for funeral and so I was expecting to see her one final time. I rubbed the gem on the belly of the small pink-haired troll doll that I had in my jacket pocket. A doll I had planned to tuck into her casket upon saying my goodbyes. Unbeknownst to me, she had already been buried days prior in a private ceremony. The priest spoke about death and birth being mere doors through which one passes and that the soul continues unto eternity. This made little sense to a person such as myself, whose life experience spanned a measly decade. I had little understanding of the complexities of life, let alone eternal life. All I understood was that one day my friend was here and the next, she was gone, and I would never see her again. Her death opened up a chasm for me which then quickly filled with all the things that I wished I had told her. Important things like how she changed the course of a very difficult year of my life when we came to America but also the seemingly mundane things like I finally agreed with her that NKOTB’s Joey McIntyre was cuter than Jordan Knight. Mostly though, not being able to tell her how important she was to me felt like a huge miscarriage of justice, an oversight, a mistake, not something a benevolent and loving God would do. That day I learned a painful lesson that would serve me later in life. That experience taught me that I couldn't depend on closure from outside forces in order to move through painful experiences. In the absence of such closure, I would have to find ways to move forward and heal.
9.
I sat in the pews studying the faces of the other attendees. Was there a beautiful green-eyed woman sobbing at her greatest regret of not having known her remarkable daughter? Was her biological mother somewhere in our midst?
There was a large photo of her at the front of the church next to a giant standing spray with white flowers, which made me think back to our first meeting and how I wished there were California poppies in that wreath. The photograph was the same 6th-grade school picture that was pinned to the corkboard in my room. After the service, there was a balloon release in the parking lot while someone played Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls on their car stereo. The irony that she was the embodiment of this song isn’t lost on me. She was a diamond, forged through a decade of physical pain, shuffled in and out of hospitals, taking part in various clinical trials. This is to say nothing of the emotional weight she shouldered as a foster child. She was also a pearl. Whatever unforeseen circumstances that led to her conception (and later led to her being put up for foster care) created this imperfectly perfect human who was filled with an iridescent shine all her own.
10.
Deanna’s foster sister called me several weeks after the memorial service and asked whether I would like a few of her things as keepsakes. Among them was her diary. It is green with the Keroppi frog character from Hello Kitty. It came locked but with a key. I still have the diary. I have never opened it. I suppose I am afraid to read the parts about me, if there are any. The way she saw me…the me that I fear no one else has ever really seen.
This was a beautiful share P. ❤️
Thank you for sharing such deep moments and feelings. You are, and have always been, beautiful to me, too!