For Donna

She lays her head upon her dusty purple pillow and speaks the aching sorrow in her heart. "Father, please take care of my friends, Donna, Richard and Jackie. Please make them well. Please help them, Lord." She prays this every night, along with pleas for blessings on her family members, husband, sister, daughter, son, grandson...indeed, on the world at large. She prays her thanks for what she has, and for the succor that is given them in their hours of need.

Tonight, she no longer prays that Donna is healed. Instead, she prays for a painless passage into the next life for her friend. She prays that the Father will take Donna into heaven. The grief weighs heavy on her heart as it has every night for the last six weeks, since Donna called her to tell her she had Stage 4 cancer of the pancreas, stomach and liver. Tears leak from her puffy eyes onto her pillowcase as she finally drifts into unconscious sleep.

The next morning, she wakes, swings her aging knees over the side of the bed and stands, looking for her slippers. She thinks of Donna, and the remembrance of yesterday's news that her friend is now unresponsive. As the memory fills her mind, it is no longer the heavy weight on her heart that it has been. While still tinged with sadness around the edges, instead there is also a lifting, an unfettered feeling, like a kite that has torn loose of its string and is flying free up and up.  "She is gone." the realization comes to her mind. The time is 6:30 a.m.

She makes her way to the front of the house. She knows her husband is sitting out on the front porch with his coffee. She opens the door and stares at him through the screen. "Donna is gone." she says to him. "I just know it." She fixes her morning ice water and her own cup of coffee and goes out to join him.

Following her morning ritual with her beloved, she comes in and fires up her computer and looks to see if there has been any social media news posted of her friend's status. Nothing new. At about 8:30 her phone rings. "Rrrr. Telemarketers are starting early." she thinks. But no. The call is from Connecticut.  She answers and hears her friend's cousin introduce herself and go on to tell her that Donna died earlier that morning around 8 a.m. EST.  She calculates the time difference: about a half hour before she got out of bed...

Later, she tries to explain the feeling she had when she woke up and thought of her friend. "Maybe she stopped by to let you know and tell you goodbye." her husband suggests. The idea spawns a fresh bout of tears.

Goodbye for now, Donna. You had a heart as big as Montana. At least, there are no 'hyen-yas' in heaven to scare you. You're fine now and I'll see you again some day. Fly high on those new wings, girl, fly high.

Till next time,