Triena and Tanya's Toilet Tale

There are some friends who bring out the best in us. I've been blessed to have more than one although it took Carri's passing plus almost three years to open my eyes and see them. One of those friends is 34 and expecting her first child and over a week ago she made me laugh so hard that I doubled over. I haven't laughed like that in years and didn't think I ever really would again. It was that deep down in my belly, side-splitting “only we would find this funny” kind of laughter. I truly felt Carri watching from above, smiling and nodding her head in approval at my reaction to the gastronomical shenannigans going on in a Walmart bathroom. (One of Carri's favorite websites was dedicated to the customers of Walmart-I don't remember what it was but boy, did she use it for a good laugh herself.)

Over a week ago my friend, Triena, and I went out for a hearty Saturday morning breakfast and some shopping. (See, I can do the shopping thing, happily, as long as it's a home improvement/D.I.Y. Kind of store, greenhouse/nursery or craft store. For clothes I still go shopping in Triena's walk-in closets.) We settled for IHOP for breakfast and Lowes to look for some discounted flower bulbs and then one brief stop at Wally World for some orange juice and a few other necessities.

After popping our bellies full of some of IHOP's finest cuisine and countless people coming up to Triena to say “Hi!” or “Congratulations!” (I swear, she knows the whole town. No joke.) a realization hit me. My inner grown up who is forever telling me to “Grow up!” was shouting in my ear “See! You're not as alone as you thought. Stop feeling sorry for yourself over what you've lost and be thankful for what you have.” I saw how many friends she had at just that one packed restaurant and I was humbled and so thankful that even at this season of her life she still would drop everything if I called to say I needed to talk.

It's true. After my special little boy came along all of my friends without children dropped me like a hot potato EXCEPT Triena. She stayed on, patiently waiting for me to be the good friend I used to be when we were single and roommates together. When Carri got sick, Triena let me cry over the phone and admit all the fear I had about the frighteningly possible outcome-something I couldn't talk to Carri about. Besides Carri, my friendship with Triena has lasted the longest and NOT because I put in the effort. That was all Triena with her heart of gold and infectious sense of humor. This is a woman who knows I haven't always been a morning person. She endured my moods, my drama and my constant bathroom issues in our little one BR apartment. Picture it: Christmas 1997. My funny roommate wakes me up to give me my Christmas present- a pair of “Grinch” slippers with a box of Immodium stuffed in one and a pack of Camels in the other. (Yes, I used to smoke.)

We were reminiscing about that time in our lives just the other day as we were talking about our current financial situations. She said “Hey remember that apartment? We split a $350 rent, a small utility bill, had no car payments and still, we were always broke!” But we always had nice clothes. (That employee discount was too good of an incentive to pass up on the clothes and the checks that came out of working at Sears usually went right back into Sears.)

Back from Memory Lane...

We finished eating and headed to Lowes to digest our mega-breakfast and look for the bulbs but left with gigantic poinsettias (we're easily distracted by a good sale).

Then it was off to Walmart where the real fun started happening.

Being pregnant, Triena had a need to use the restroom pretty much at every stop and that big breakfast was doing a real number on her. Off to the pristine Walmart potty room we went.

She settled on Door Number 4 and handed me her purse. The door was barely latched shut when the toilet flushed and startled us both.

“Wow, that was fast!” I laughed.

“I know! Haven't even dropped my drawers!”

And just as she said that, the toilet flushed again.

“Man, I haven't even sat down yet!”

Another flush.

“I think you picked the toilet with OCD!” I giggled again.

Tinkle. Tinkle. Tin---FLUSH!

“Darn it!! I'm not done yet!”

Whoosh!

“What the heck? It's trying to suck me in!”

“Feed Meeeeeee, Seymour!” I bellowed out over the flushing din.

By this point the situation had gotten so absurd it was like a cartoon playing in my head and I lost it picturing the toilet as a giant man- eating Venus Flytrap trying to take my friend out.

Another flush in response to our laughter.

I steadied myself on the sink and tried to figure out who the whack-job blonde in the mirror was. She looked like a lunatic. Cheeks beet red, hair frizzing in all directions, eyes...hmm...dare I say, sparkling? I saw all that in just a fraction of a second (which is all the potty needed to flush again, apparently) and laughed inwardly at myself for finding such a situation beyond amusing.

Then, suddenly, silence... except for our laughter.

“Okay, I'm done. You can flush now.” said Triena to her toilet.

Silence.

“Seriously, I'm done. I'm standing up and you're not going to do your job? Now?” she tried provoking it to no avail.

“Alright, I'm leaving now.” she told Mr. Suddenly Silent

She unlatched the door and took two steps out toward the sinks.

With a seemingly indignant reply we got one more last

FLUSH!!! Gurgle, Gurgle, Gurgle.

I almost fell down that time.

We were in hysterics by the time we emerged from the bathroom, a silly new memory made and one that won't soon be forgotten which is really good for both of us because in a very short time, Triena's moving out of state.

I'm excited for her to go and selfishly sorry she has to go but I promise, every time I hear a toilet flush I will smile. (I know, talk about a poetic sentiment, right?)

May God Bless and Keep you and baby Benjamin always in His hands, Triena. Thank you for your patience, kindness and generosity over the years. I'm writing this down for you and the world to see now because another friend taught me that it can all be over far too soon and that I need to express how I feel when I feel it and right now, I feel Thankful and Blessed to know you.

Chicago: From False Hope to New Hope

Since I can remember, I've had a tendency to find blame for why some things happen.  It'd been impossible, implausible to me that anything happened for no reason at all.
I've blamed people: I am not an Academy Award winning actress because my parents told me that I needed to study something in college that would give me a greater chance of being able to support myself. (I was paying my own way through with Student Loans. I could've studied anything I wanted and yet it was I, not my parents, who had the ultimate decision. Still, I blamed them for years.)
I've blamed inanimate objects: How the heck did that Lego block grow legs and land in the hallway at midnight for my foot to find? (Even though, I'm the one responsible for making sure the kids pick up their toys before bed. Still, blamed a piece of plastic.)
Lastly, I blamed places. Namely, Chicago.
Because....
Chicago killed my best friend.
Before Carri's death almost 3 years ago, I never Hated Chicago. Heck, I never even thought about Chicago unless Oprah was on. Other than Oprah, Chicago didn't seem like an interesting enough place to give a second thought about.
I'd always wanted to visit places like Montana, Colorado, Hawaii, California, New York.
It's no secret that when Carri did some research on alternative cancer treatments, namely Vitamin C infusions, I wasn't on board. The cancer was in her liver by then and I'd made an appointment for her at Cancer Treatment Centers of America.  I wanted her to lob every medical weapon at those tumors not feed them glorified orange juice.  (By the way, I can't drink orange juice anymore and refuse to wear the color orange. This blame game goes deep.)
But Carri had always been more intelligent than I and I took her word as pure Gospel. So I tried to get on board.
So many circumstances seemed to come together so quickly. Her aunt was able to travel with her to settle her in the apartment that a church member's family owned and offered to her during treatment while she waited for her husband and sons to join her a month or so later. So, I thought, maybe she was right. Maybe this was God's way of saying this was the way to go.
We talked and texted several times a day at this point.  She was lonely without her husband and her boys but made the best of small, gray, cold apartment.  It was November 2010 and Chicago was about to have one of the snowiest and coldest winters on record.
Carri, not a fan of cold and snow, having grown up in our native Maine, tried to make the best of it. She visited the famous Museum of Natural History, a famous radio station, and joined the "Y" to help keep her body as fit and strong as possible for the fight of her life.
I won't go into all the details of how that so-called treatment facility(and Chicago) let her down or neglected her care or how that quack of a doctor(who lived in Chicago) seemed to care more about his golf game than whether or not a 32 year old mother of 2 got her regular chemo on time.
Everyday, I'd watch the national news and weather and I'd see storm system after massive storm system. I'd see news clips of snow plows and tall drifts.
It was on one of those windy snowy days that I was sitting in my van in South Carolina where it was a balmy day in the sixties when she called me after one of her Vitamin infusions. She was walking through snow to get to the "Y" and a nice hot sauna. I was rattling off one of my endless stories as I came to a bend in the car rider line. Suddenly, she said "I'm going to be sick." She'd developed angina and started complaining about her chest hurting. Then she said her legs felt heavy. Then she hung up, threw up in the snow and slowly made her way back to the apartment and was taken to the Emergency Room. It was the last time we ever spoke verbally on the phone again.
The hospital (in Chicago) gave her fentanyl patches for the pain of the ascites that had distended her belly and legs making her look like she was ten months pregnant. The tumors were weeping fluid into her body and all of us, her family, friends were weeping countless tears for her ordeal.
What the hospital (Chicago) neglected to tell Carri was that using a heating pad on top of the fentanyl patch would cause it to dispense the medicine very quickly and she ended up overdosing and back in the hospital.
After two months of the planned 3 month stay, Carri, her husband and boys made the decision to discontinue her treatment there and go back home to her former Oncologist (who had begged her not to pursue the Vitamin C treatment in Chicago.)  She got on a plane, barely able to walk, with her aunt and said goodbye to Chicago forever.
Unfortunately, her Oncologist had bad news for her and you all already know how her story ended.
So, a month later, she was gone. And I had to find blame. I blamed her doctor, I blamed the treatment for not working, I blamed the wind, snow and ice and the gray skies. I blamed Chicago.
After her death, anytime something came on about Chicago, took place in Chicago or Chicago was mentioned-I turned it off. I vowed I'd never go anywhere near that place that took my vibrant friend away from me after offering false hope and making her miserable in the process. Did you know she ran a 5K a few weeks before she left for Chicago? In the rain? She was strong when she left Eugene, even with the toll the cancer and chemo had taken on her tiny body. She was strong. And Chicago left her weak.
Fast forward almost exactly three years.
I'd learned how to cope with life without my best friend. I started making new friends. I joined a church and was Saved by the grace of our glorious Lord and forgiven all my sins. I reconnected with old friends on facebook.
One of those friends, a former high school classmate named Kim and I reconnected after she got back from her tour of duty in Afghanistan. I couldn't believe that she had been voluntarily putting her life on the line everyday for people who didn't even know her and certainly didn't appreciate her. We weren't close friends in school but we had a teasing sort of friendship. She was all Southern Rebel Pride and I was a Damn Yankee. But I think deep down there had to have been some sort of commonality because I never forgot her, even fifteen years after graduation. (Matter of fact, every time I heard Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland talk or sing I always thought of Kim and her twangy accent.)
This summer, while my parents were on a three week vacation in Maine I and my three kids stayed at their house to take care of their thirteen goats and chickens. Yup, this long time gone from the country girl was hand milking goats twice a day and learning how to pasteurize milk. I was tired but it was a lot of fun for me and the kids....with the exception of a Billy Goat named Georgie Boy.
Georgie Boy was a randy fella. And he always looked at me like I was his future girlfriend. He always tried to head butt me in the stomach as I tried to get to his food stand which he tore down within three days of my arrival. (Sexual frustration, I'm pretty sure.)
I recorded my interactions with this ornery Billy Goat on facebook as I do with most of my life but didn't think anyone was really paying attention.
A couple weeks ago, the night before my dad's back surgery I was spending the night so I could take care of the goats while they were gone and I invited Kim to stop by. This was the first time we'd seen each other since our graduation day. She hadn't changed a bit. Still beautiful, still twangy, still witty.
It was a nice visit and then...she almost made me cry.
Before leaving, she said she had something for me and pulled out a ball cap with the words "Billy Goat" on top and the word I've avoided for three years underneath: Chicago.
With the hat, came a story.
While I was busy tending to stubborn goats, Kim's company sent her to Chicago for a conference. While she was there she came across a tavern called "Billy Goat". It was located three stories below the city and it had been the hang out and meeting place of many of The Tribune reporters and writers. When she heard the history behind the place she said she thought of me right away. She said it combined what I was doing at the time with the fact that I'm a writer (she thinks I'm good!) that she snatched it right up and waited for just the right time to give it to me.
That night I shared details, private ones that I'd only ever confided to one other person before and as the words came out the burden on my shoulders grew lighter and lighter as I realized that "Chicago" had finally kept it's promise to heal. Chicago took one friend away but sent me a new one. I don't know if it'll be another fifteen years before we see each other again but I know that I can still reach out to her anytime and she'll be there.
I have two other awesome girlfriends who live close by and I feel blessed to now have more friends at this point in my life than I've ever had before. I thought Carri was the only friend I would ever need but I think from Heaven, both she and God knew better and sent me some amazing and compassionate women to go through life with.
For those of you who may wonder why I blamed Chicago and doctors and treatments instead of the cancer, I don't know why I've never blamed Cancer. Maybe because it was invisible. Or maybe it was because it was inside the body of my best friend and I couldn't hate even one iota of her.
So, thank you Carri. Thank You Kim. Thank you Lord. And thank you, Chicago, too,  for teaching me a lesson in appreciation of life, love, friendship, and humor.

Lifelines and Laughter: Carri, Hummus, Zumba and What the heck else can I ...

Lifelines and Laughter: Carri, Hummus, Zumba and What the heck else can I ...: Carri's been with me a lot lately. I don't mean that I have been thinking about her a lot. I mean, She's. Been. Here. I'd b...

Carri, Hummus, Zumba and What the heck else can I call this Post?

Carri's been with me a lot lately. I don't mean that I have been thinking about her a lot. I mean, She's. Been. Here.
I'd been living my day to day life as normally as possible for the last year or so. I thought of her everyday but the pain wasn't as sharp as it had been the first year. You know what else wasn't as sharp? My memories. That feeling of connectedness with the part of my life that was defined by our friendship. I was, for the first time in over 20 years living my life ON MY OWN.
I am a mom so I'm never alone. I am married and even though he's either at work on second shift or asleep or helping out a friend or hanging with his buddies on the weekend I can still text him or call him or sometimes even run into him in the bathroom (he's so regular it's almost scary) so I do have an adult to talk to when I need one. I joined a church almost two years ago and I've met some wonderful ladies that I get to see every week and chat our lives on facebook once in a while but it's not the same. Oh, some of my life is still the same as it was when she was here.
I still can't make gravy from scratch.
I still hate making left hand turns at intersections without a green arrow.
I still have to sing that song "30 Days has September, April, June and November. When short February's done, all the rest have thirty-one" to know how many days till the next mortgage payment is due because my calendar is still buried under the bill pile on my desk.
I still have the Depression I was diagnosed with at nineteen.
I still have PTSD from the sexual assault that happened at 21.
Here's what's not the same:
I no longer listen to the last voicemail Carri left me before she was unable to hold a conversation (but I still haven't deleted it.)
I no longer think that I am a lousy cook even though I can't make gravy. I make a mean apple pie and none of my kids have starved to death yet.
I no longer have it in the back of my head that someday I'll have another Best Friend. I'm content to have a variety of Good Friends.
I no longer believe I have to do everything myself in order for it to be done right.
God has become such a Center in my life that I no longer feel alone. While others may use meditation, I use prayer. While others go to Temple, I go to Church. When others mock me, I love them.
After years of believing I could conquer depression(and after admitting that I had PTSD-something I had wholeheartedly denied) with diet, exercise, herbal supplements, self-help books and behavioral therapy I finally went to a doctor and got medication. And I wish I'd done it sooner. Because now my kids have a fully functioning mom. There are less hours with the TV on...less time on the video games. They are spending more time with me outside the house and outside our comfort zones.  My friends (the ones I've made since after high school) are finally seeing the "real me" for the first time.  The one who laughs on a regular basis, who doesn't care if anyone sees her lame moves on Zumba, who isn't afraid to lift her eyes up to meet a stranger's eyes or talk to someone new...the one who headbanged to Bohemian Rhapsody in the middle of my 9th grade physics class just because everyone seemed so bored and I wanted to literally, shake things up, a bit.
And my husband, my poor husband, who has only ever seen glimpses of "Real Tanya" since we met after I acquired all my baggage and my brain chemicals went all wackadoodle, said to me about two months ago "I finally have my wife back.."
I'd always done things the way I thought Carri would do them. When she was alive, you all know, I literally asked her HOW TO DO EVERYTHING...and then I'd do whatever she said. She believed in herbs and naturopaths and midwives and exercise and diet and I thought, since she was the smartest person I'd ever known that that was how to live life the Right way. Some of it worked for me and some of it didn't but I never wanted to admit when it didn't work. Like there was something really wrong with me if Her way didn't help me. If she were reading this now, I know she would be so upset to know that I had felt that way. She always said she couldn't understand why I thought she was smarter than me or more talented or why I thought she had all the answers. What a burden I placed on her shoulders under the guise of Best Friendship! I can't imagine that I reciprocated even a fraction of what she did for me and I hope I'm forgiven for that. I hope she knows I loved her the best I knew how at the time.
As I said in the beginning, She. Has. Been. Here.
Sounds crazy but she was with me at the grocery store. I bought Pita Chips and get this....hummus!!!! Me! Hummus!!! What?
Then I saw the most irresistible looking hunk of spiced Havarti cheese. What? No processed and sliced and neatly packaged processed yellow crap?
I had to have it...that yummy hunk of white and speckled smoothness from a local place wrapped in what really could have been Saran Wrap.
Did I mention Zumba? Carri went to a class with a friend of hers out there in Eugene and I'd never heard of the craziness before. Sounded insane to me. I used to dance in my room when I was a teenager to the radio or cassette tapes I recorded off the radio. Never in front of people. Like that Madonna song "At night I lock the door where no one else can see. I'm tired of dancing here all by myself. Tonight I want to dance with someone else. Get into the groove...." Okay, I have no childcare so I dance Zumba in my living room and I had forgotten how much fun dancing like no one's watching is. But I live right next to the railroad tracks and the railway fixer upper guys have been out here sweating in the South Carolina sun and maybe I should have closed my living room window blinds but something in me said that even if they caught a glimpse of me messing up every other step I was still the entertainment of the day (I always wanted to be an actress anyway.) whether I was making their heat index go up or making them laugh their cares away in the mid-day sun.
Carri did flash mobs even though she thought she had no rhythm and she sang karaoke in front of people even with stage fright. She fought cancer fiercely. And even though she died, she didn't lose. Cancer never took away her laugh, her courage, her love, her indomitable spirit. She's. Still. Here. And I'm certain she's not just still here with just me. I'm just the only one of them with a blog (as far as I know anyway.)
This body has borne three kids. It ain't perfect. I'm 36 and I don't turn heads the way I used to. But I once had a best friend. She knew everything there was to know about me and loved me anyway. Today, she's here to say  "Tanya, it's time to be your own best friend. Love yourself anyway."
I don't have to listen to the last voice mail she left me because I know it by heart:
"Hi, it's me. It took me lots of steps to get from where I was to where I am...Happily. Ummmm, maybe you'll call me back today? Love you. Bye."
Well, Carri, it's taken me a LOT of steps to get from where I was to where I am now since you left this world. And now I understand why you used the word "happily".
I hope everyone who reads this understands that too...
Love and hugs, my angel friend...still teaching me lessons, still giving me more than I give you. I hope that keeping your memory alive will go a little way toward repaying you for all you've done for me. That's something I'll never stop doing.