Last weekend I scrapbooked my son's 18th birthday which was a surprise party that I threw for him on Thursday night. Technically he has another week before he's 18.
Here is his face right after all his friends yelled, "Surprise!" He loved it and was surprised. The key to pulling it off? Don't tell anyone until two days before. Yes, this was the most last-minute party ever, but it worked. I knew for over 2 months I needed to do this when he pointed out that his two sisters had both had big surprises for their birthdays before, but not him. Fortunately, he set it all up for me by telling me "the guys" were coming over to watch a favorite TV show and could I order pizzas? All I had to do was invite the girls, buy cake and ice cream, cut up a big watermelon and buy sodas and M&M's. I even had the girls tell the boys it was a surprise, and they all carried it out well!
I love his friends. I taught most of them in Sunday School when they were 14 and 15. What a blessing in his life.
Tonight I'm up because I just can't sleep. My friend, Amy, has had stroke 7, and this time I don't think she's coming out of it. I spent most of today with her though she was unresponsive. When I kissed her forehead good-bye, I knew it might be the last time. She's not breathing on her own. What to say but I love you, and Thank you for being my friend and brush away the tears. I don't have any pictures of her in the last two years. I don't know why, but I do have some from the last twelve. I have a whole scrapbook of our trip together to Vienna. She, like myMike and MyGirl don't really like their pictures taken. She would always say, I don't look like the real me, as her acromagly robbed her of her true self, but I never knew any different, so it didn't matter to me. I need to ignore that request from everyone from now on. I certainly do not have Enough. It was a hard day. My tears were for myself and those left who love her most. It was sad to see her shake with internal pain or to touch her feverish skin and not be able to cool her enough, though we tried.
Amy became my friend pretty quickly. I used to visit teach her. One time she mentioned how much her husband liked Beethoven, and I said, Mine too. We'll have to all get together. We did, and I still remember the first time they came to our house, sitting on our green sofa, she and David holding hands like newlyweds. We found ourselves laughing and talking and they begged me to play some Debussy and Mike some Beethoven. After that, everything else just flowed and we've never looked back. Amy and I were hard pressed to ever have a conversation that was less than an hour. Sometimes we'd have to schedule lunch just to guarantee we'd have enough time to really talk. Right now I miss her voice. I miss picking up the phone and hearing, "CAROLYNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!" booming over the line. How do you not love someone who is THAT happy just to talk to you? I know she was like that with so many, it wasn't just me, but I loved her for it anyway. It used to be that I'd have to schedule her weekend evenings a month in advance, she was always hosting or visiting somewhere. She knew when something was wrong. One time after scrapbooking with the ladies, she called me the next day to find out what was up. I hadn't said anything, but she said "Something is up," and she was right.
She was so creative and so funny and so giving and so wise and so intuitive and so connected to my soul. We loved the same hymns, and spent one afternoon scrapbooking together, listening to the same one over and over, singing and harmonizing with it and loving it. We didn't have all the same interests but enough that being together was always interesting. I learned a lot about parenting and living with trials as I tried to emulate her. We liked the same foods so it made it easy to go to lunch and split the plate, saving our waistlines and our wallets, oohing and aahing over our excellent selection. We've cried and laughed, dreamed and traveled together, and made lots of memories. It was her idea to go camping at Rocky Gap when the cicadas emerged. How can I ever forget that? Or the day she called me up and told me when needed to take the children shark teeth hunting and we found one. There was also the time we sat on my back patio and cried at sad news, sipping our lemonades for a couple of hours or the Thanksgiving we played Dalmuti for 6 hours and were shocked at how fast that time flew! I'll miss her arm on my shoulder when she walked down my front steps to keep her balance and the excitement in her voice at whatever Benjamin's latest adventures were. I'll miss her big huge hugs and her way of making myMike always feel like the king of his castle. We shared sweet and sacred experiences, concerts at the Kennedy Center and laundry tips. But, mostly we just shared our hearts, and it is her great big heart that I will miss the most. She was real. She didn't live on pretense. She lived to give. Her dad told me today that her husband's family thinks she walks on water. She was the glue for them. She was a sparkling jewel in my life. I treasured her and enjoyed every minute with her. Her dad and I wished today that we could have her just five years more, but I think the Lord has other plans. And so, I will trust Him, even when the tears burst forth as I drive down the road, thinking of her. Or hear Andrea Bocceli sing #4 on the CD she gave me, because he sings it in Portugese, the language of her mission. She loved that experience and spoke of it frequently. I'm sure the next mission she serves she will be healthy and happy again and for that I'm grateful. Its been a long time since she hasn't physically hurt. Now my heart hurts saying good-bye.
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