Remember

I was going through facebook, and I saw that my friend, Teresa, was on facebook at the same time. I went to her profile to tell her how excited I was that I would get to see her next week (I'll be in Muncie). However, when I went to her profile, there were comments of condolence on her wall. My stomach hit the floor, and my eyes filled with tears. As I cried, Jeff turned around and asked me why I was crying. I told him that I thought my friend's mom had died.

I haven't spoken with Teresa on the phone since 2005. We've just e-mailed since then, and I haven't seen her since 2006 at my bridal shower. Despite this lack of communication, we were really, really good friends my senior year. It was a hard year for me and for her, and we kind of helped keep each other together. Sometimes I thought I might have fallen apart without her love and friendship.

Teresa had a lovely mother who fought cancer for 9 years. I remember sitting on her bed next to Teresa and talking to her about our day or our choir concert or our evening plans. When my parents were out of town, I got to stay at Teresa's house and pretend to be part of her family. Her mother was/is the embodiment of love. She was so strong, so comforting, such a wonderful influence of good in Teresa's life.

I just got off the phone with T, and it is true. Her mother passed away yesterday morning. I felt so dumb crying on the phone to Teresa. She said it was okay, a lot of people were crying around her. She just felt weird. It's not real yet. Her mother is still here, just harder to see.

I agree completely.

Sometimes I wonder how people who don't have the truth of the afterlife ever manage to wake up in the morning. If you didn't have that testimony, that knowledge, that Earth is not the end, then why would you do anything? How could you do anything? There would be no point to work. No point to love. No point to live if it just ended.

Gratefully, it doesn't. We are eternal beings with a loving Heavenly Father, and we will all continue to live even after we have given up our mortal bodies.

I love you, Teresa, and I wish that I could hold you instead of talk to you on a dumb phone.

This is from Teresa's profile. I think it is from the movie Good Will Hunting, but I don't know, because I've never seen it.


"I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms 'visiting hours' don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much."