You Arrived Like a Day and Passed Like a Cloud

I don't mean to be Debbie Downer here, folks, but Rainey is really sad. This thing with Sooz has just got me so so so veryvery sad. One piece of it, for sure, is just the whole thing of Peter being a widower and Kiki losing her mom before she's even old enough to remember her, which is bad enough. My friend is broken hearted and there is nothing I can do about it.

But the other thing, which is really selfish, is my loss. Because this isn't a loss like I'm used to. I've lost people before and that is its own kind of sadness. But with Suzanne, we're talking about a person who I had only started to get to know. She wasn't one of my best friends but over time she would have been. Our lives were intertwined, forever, because she asked me to be Kiki's godmom. And when I said "yes" to that I told her that it was for life. "In for a penny, in for a pound" were, I believe, my exact words. I told her that being that child's godmother wasn't just for the day of her baptism but was a commitment for life, to the child and to her and Peter as they raised her. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that signing on for first days of school and sex talks and first sacraments and bad boyfriends that there was any possibility of it being done without Suzanne. But when I told her that if I was in I was all in her response was "Love. Every. Word". And so we began to build our friendship.

But we didn't have much time. I counted it up yesterday. There are less than 20 occasions where Suzanne and I were together, not counting phone calls - which were frequent - and Facebook, which was even more frequent. One dinner, one lunch, one BBQ, one pedicure, 2 brunches, a handful of parties. Every one of those occasions is clear in my heart, like scenes from a movie. Like the time she turned to me at The Child's Sweet Sixteen party and asked, "How did you do it? How did you raise a teenager who is so totally aware of the world but still so sweet and innocent?" Never having been asked that I said something inane, like "I don't know" and then we talked about it. Because I don't really know how you raise a child. You just do what you have to do each day and somehow all those little exercises lead up to the end product. But the point is, I have so few memories of Suzanne that I can remember them all vividly. Which I guess is a good thing.

Yesterday at her wake Peter was playing her iPod...Sooze's playlist. And it could have been mine. Well, actually, mine has way more 80's music and no BTO but still. "Talk of the Town" by The Pretenders came on and I started to cry. Because that is one of my favorite songs and all I could think was "Dammit...we could have been besties and we're never going to be because the frakking cancer came and took her away". And then I felt REALLY selfish because there were people on that rooftop, eating fabulous food and drinking pink champan-ya (her favorite), that had lost so much more than I had...so much more time and history. People who talked to her every day. People like her mom. Her husband. And there I was boo hooing because I didn't have her anymore.

Oy to the frakking vey.

Anywake, the point is, I'm really going to miss this woman I didn't even know as well as I could have but who is going to be a constant part of my life because she has entrusted me with the spiritual life of her beautiful child. And right now, it is a weight past bearing.