Upon Waking Up

My earliest memories of Carly Henley date back to the blacktop of Marvista Elementary, when all the grades were let loose three times a day for the chaos of recess. She was a year younger than me, but her bright blonde hair is a light in the blur of my tunnel vision into childhood. We grew up together in the same community, playing the same sports, attending the same schools, hanging out at the same places until we became personally acquainted in high school, continuing the friendship beyond graduation, a mark of its genuineness. Carly became a valuable friend in the later part of my twenty-one years, and though I am deeply content and grateful for our history, I find myself wishing for more vignettes that include her standing in the foreground of my memories. 

I dreamt about Carly the other night, which isn’t a first, but it was the first time she was actually in it, and I woke up kicking my dream-self: Why didn’t I run up to her, hug her, push her around like I used to do? The dream version of Carly was dressed like the one I tangibly knew in a red zip-up sweatshirt with white drawstrings at the hood, the kind I envision her in whenever she comes to mind, and she comes to mind a lot these days. But Carly’s clothes aren’t the point, even though she loved that red sweatshirt. It’s what the clothing accents about Carly that remains freshly imprinted upon my waking mind: it’s the way her natural yet commercially perfect blonde hair shines golden against the apple red of her zip-up. That and her green eyes, the luminescence of her smile, and the way her blue jeans highlight the length of her legs. Needless to say, Carly Henley was the queen of first impressions, and lasting ones.

But when I talk about her, how bright her smile is, should it be how bright her smile was? I’m not always sure which tense to use these days: is it friend I had, or friend I have? I resist the connotations associated with the past tense; they speak of a distance and loneliness and fear that I pull away from. Yet the verb ‘have’ implies that Carly’s still mine to physically embrace, to throw my head back with as we laugh over nothing of great consequence, and ‘to have’ implies that I can still sit in her presence, which is a magnificent thing to consider. To think that we could sit across or besides each other, listening to our voices as we exchange questions, ideas, hopes, admirations, fears, absolute dislikes, random, unexpected facts, would-you-rathers, disconcerting secrets, lofty ambitions, frustrations, truths, wise sayings, encouragement… All pastimes now. The sheer wonder of the bygone reality that I could unconsciously reach out and touch her arm in mid conversation is now so grand a notion where it used to be thoughtless.

Whenever I’d make the drive down the curving hill in the direction of her house, I would always catch a glimpse of the shimmering surface of the Sound, a patch of sparkling blue between the green pines and rooftops. The dream was set at night, and cars were parked on the street outside Carly’s house, which sits on a corner minutes from Puget Sound, a salty inlet of the Pacific Ocean. We were at her house, just like the night of her memorial, same faces and semi-formal attire. Only her family and a handful of friends had gathered at her house following the service, and in my dream, like the actual night itself, we were kindly encouraged to start heading home, slowly but surely ushered out of the Henley home. It had been a long day, a long day for all involved. The weight Carly’s mom carried with her that day is unimaginable to me, as are the contradictions that had to have been constantly clanging within: the overwhelming disbelief that hits low and hard as you take in your surroundings and realize why the scene in front of you is happening.

I can think of no other feeling more devastating than hitting new bottoms with each realization that your beautiful and infectiously joyful daughter isn’t just out at a friend’s, that it is not only unlikely, but near impossible, that she will walk through the door you’re staring at. I say near impossible because the spirit needs the smallest of sparks to continue glowing so that it won’t be completely snuffed out, so all the poured out love, life lessons taught, hair braided, soccer games, tennis matches and concerts attended, conversations cherished, perspective shared, and the glorious time spent living and breathing together will retain their worth.
              I hesitate to write about how I would react as a mother who had so recently lost her daughter since I am neither a mother, nor do I have a daughter, but I do know one thing: I would prefer sharp and unexpected jolts of crushing, collapsing pain to that dreaded, aching throb of sorrow and numbness that crashes over and over and over again. At least when grief overtakes the body’s strength and one is reduced to an exhausted heap on the unvacuumed floor one has the reassurance that the well of tears will eventually run dry. But the ghosts of sorrow and shock are a perpetual ball and chain preventing any chance of feeling normalcy in the everydayness of life. When we do finally come up for air, it’s only to be forced below the surface again, to be submersed in confusion and anger and disbelief, and to wish the dark, unfathomable depths would swallow us whole.

Yet there we were in my dream, several of us old friends from high school leaving Carly’s house, meandering and talking as we shuffled to our cars, some of us stopping on the dashed yellow line in the middle of the road to finish our farewells, stories, and plans for getting together the next day. We all lingered beneath the night sky, dotted with stars dimmed by the waxing moon, a few nights shy of being full. None of us quite wanted to return home, so the car keys dangling from our hands were subtly pocketed one by one as we lingered in the street, chatting in twos or threes. Sensing that the night somehow wasn’t finished, or rather, that she wasn’t finished with the night, Carly, in her red sweatshirt and long, golden hair, outstretched her arms to the star-pocked sky and twirled around in circles, reveling in the brightness of the moon. With a smile bordering on mischievous and her undeniable laugh distinct in the quiet of the night, she beckoned us to do the same.

“C’mon guys. Why would you go home,” Carly scoffed. “We’ve got the whole night!”

Though we had started to head toward our cars, she had voiced our desires to stay together a while longer, maybe all night if need be, so we inevitably drifted to the middle of the street, where we huddled against the settling chill of an October night, reminiscent of that same October night we stood outside the Henley’s, in the vacant street, circled up for a short-lived silence, reminding me of Zoë Akins’s poem This Is My Hour:

“The dusk grows deeper, and on silver wings

The twilight flutters like a weary gull

Toward some sea-island, lost and beautiful,

Where a sea-syren sings.

‘This is my hour,’ you breathe with quiet lips;

And filled with beauty, dreaming and devout,

We sit in silence, while our thoughts go out –

Like treasure-seeking ships.”

And so we stood there with hunched shoulders, shrouded in wool jackets and pea coats, as our breaths vaporized in dragon-like puffs. We stood in the middle of that street simply because it was the right thing to do, it was good and much-needed to do nothing but stand in each others' presence. I forget how powerful presence can be. The dream ends there, but it speaks of a very real truth. I’m hungry for Carly’s presence, and the more I repeat those five words, the more I’m tempted to call her phone to hear her voicemail greeting. She doesn’t say anything particularly unique, but that’s just it: it’s Carly’s voice on the other end, no one else’s.

Within 24 hours of receiving the news that Carly had died, and in fact, had taken her own life, I sat down with someone who could do the talking, because I didn’t know how to. I don’t remember the conversation well except for the final question asked of me. As my wise friend posed the question, he gestured to the empty chair angled toward me, and then gently inquired.

“If Carly were sitting here, right there, what would you want to say to her?”

I had held it together fairly well until this point. The tears were hot and sudden, no more than three or four of them as I was determined to rein them in and repair the wall so nothing else could spill over. I didn’t get very far in my answer, but my answer’s the same now as it was then.

“I’d just want to have a conversation, a normal conversation. And I’d just want to know how she’s doing, and talk like we did the last time she was right in front of me. It would just start with, ‘How you doin’?’”