"My Favorite American"

1-29-2025

Recently, a friend from ages ago got in contact (thanks internet) messaging: "Hello long lost Bianka!"

He admitted to having been a lurker on my public profile for a while but decided he should get in contact in case I did indeed decide to eliminate my social stuffs or go dark or worse get kicked off the platforms. 

“Because I know how quickly you can disappear, Bianka.” 

When we met he was stuck living with a difficult family situation, and way too many responsibilities for a fella so young. He worked 50+ hours as a graveyard shift CNA while caring for aging ailing parents, and his dead sister’s children because her husband had lost his mind with grief. 

My friend had only one night a month to himself.

We met by chance at the usual sort of art party from back then (a genxer style rager) with too many drugs, homemade beer experiments, wine in large fancy fragile glasses served with boards of terrible cheese and bread.

There were three pretentious garage bands, and everyone trying pretend to be cool in a warehouse full of art no one paid the slightest attention to instead choosing to get trashed and/or try to get laid. Or if all else failed, they did lines of cocaine. 

That night I had headed upstairs above the fray attempting to hide out from the crowd, since I didn’t generally partake in the substance abuse. I was searching for some air that wasn't blue grey thick with cigarette smoke when I saw him at end of the plank walk looking at a giant canvas.

I startled him. "Oh sorry I didn't mean to scare you." I apologized and started to shuffle away. 

"No don't go. I was just admiring this thing." He explained looking back at the 10 ft tall 5 ft wide canvas.

"Really? What do you like about it?" 

I didn't think the piece was particularly good, but the bright colors forming a naked woman stylized into a tree, pleased me. It was intentionally not too much like the hippie nonsense popular then, instead it was oddly stark and strong despite the color palette.

"The truth?" He asked. I nodded. 

"Well, I keep wondering how someone found the time to paint this. I just can't imagine having that kind of life.”

“Maybe they just like bright colors, naked women, and trees.” I laughed.

“They must really like bright colors and naked women.” He gestured with his arms out at the size of the canvas. 

“But fair play to them, so do I.” He waggled his dark eyebrows smiling at me like an imp. His vocal cadence sounded vaguely British but faded in some way.

“I wonder why she is up here hidden away from the rest?” Looking down at all the party goers below dancing poorly to some acid house music. 

“No one ever looks up.” He added leaning toward me to speak because it was getting loud. 

I led him to the end of the walkway behind a shadowed wall which blocked some the sound of the thumping bass from below. 

“Maybe it’s a bit like finding the time to do it, like you said before. Maybe the artist wants people to find this but only the ones who go looking.” I said pointing back at the canvas.

“Guess we’ll never know. It’s not signed. And I can’t find the energy to ask that lot for information.” He sighed and again I detected an accent.

“Do you really like this?” I asked.

“Yes, I do, rather, and I don’t know why. Probably too rich for my blood, anyway.” He sighed again running his fingers through his bushy dark hair.

“But at least I have tonight with her, eh?”

“Well, I happen to know that this artist will trade their work for things other than money.” I grinned at him. “Do you have any skills?”

“No. Not really. I guess I used to be a decent cabinet maker and carpenter.” 

“What about music? People to play music in trade, you know for things like this.” I said loudly over the bass thumping again. I rolled my eyes. "Well, sometimes it's good." 

“Well, sorry to disappoint again. I learned piano but, well, that was a long time ago.” 

“Were you any good?” I asked wondering how long could it be really, for a fellow who couldn’t be more than twenty-five. 

“A bit.” 

“Ok what about cooking? Can you cook?” I moved closer to him. “Because I find artists are always starving.” I giggled.

“Yes, that is one thing I can do, nearly an expert chef by American standards.” He snickered.

“I have to cook for my mother these days. She gives new meaning to the word demanding, having had her own restaurant for fifteen years.” He explained. 

“So you know how to make a lot of food fast then?” I asked.

He nodded, grinning affably again.“Well, great, I guess you’ve discovered a skill that might work should I happen upon the artist.”

“You’ve happened upon. Well, then do we have a deal?” I giggled at his surprised face. “You make food for me at the next one of these, and the painting, my tree lady, she is yours.”

“What? This is your painting?” He blushed looking rather sheepish.

“Yeah, but I’m not really a painter though. I just like bright colors, naked women, and trees.” I laughed. "So it has to stay anonymous, don't want anyone asking me about it."

“This place is mine too, the warehouse. At least for now. I run all the ‘Ware- House Shows’ and I live upstairs.” I continued to explain. “So do we have a deal?”

“When do I start?”

Over the next six months my new friend cooked for six house parties even though he only had to cook for one. He said he would respect the value of my lady painting even if I did not. I paid him half the takings of the shows knowing how he needed the money and to encourage his return.

He made the best food I’ve ever eaten including making me two Lebanese feasts. He taught me how to cook some of the dishes his mother made. He introduced me to labne and toum. For a long time after, toum and labne, could rightly be described as my main food group since I ate them on everything. 

My house show parties began attracting more interesting people, better musicians, better art, dancers, and importantly to me, at the time, gorgeous young men and women from all sorts of places. 

I believed it was all because of his food so I made sure he could always be involved which is why I chose Sundays because that was his one day away. We became extremely close. He called me his favorite American. 

He had the weight of the world him on his heart sometimes, yet managed to always be cheerful and really funny. He was the only surviving child, the youngest son, his sister had committed suicide, and his brothers all died during the Lebanese civil war while his mother and father fled with him and his sister first to London, then to Baltimore as the war carried on.

On the last night he cooked for my house shows I finally convinced him to play piano. I had, by chance, found a free baby grand piano at a bar that was getting demolished. I bartered to get the black beauty moved to the warehouse, tuned and placed on a wooden floor stage. 

He built the stage for me. I teased my overworked, over burdened, Lebanese carpenter friend, about being too like Jesus when I discovered he was also a virgin. 

“Jesus wasn’t Lebanese, he was Palestinian, so of course, he was tortured to death.” was his only reply to my jests about his virginity being a divinity.

Oddly, no one had played the piano at the show on his last night.

By Monday around two in the morning, everyone had finally left. We were tidying up as had become our habit, chatting about life, art, women, and music since this was his one night to have a social life.

“Well, this is your last night official cooking night. You know you could’ve had the painting the whole time just by playing the piano for me, right?” I was tapping the low keys then ran my hands along the white keys toward middle C.

“Feels like a curse if no one plays this thing soon.” I looked toward him and made an exaggerated sad face.

“Oh alright.” He relented slinking over to the bench. 

“Wait wait!” I crawled up under the piano flipped over onto my back sliding on the smooth polished perfect floor he had crafted for me. “I’ve always wanted to do this. Ok now start”

I heard a stifled giggle. “You need to move your hair. I don’t want to step on it.” 

“Oh right.” I moved my five feet of blonde hair across my body to the other side then tapped his red chucks. “Ok go!”

I could never convey with words the experience of hearing him on the piano with the literal vibrations running through my body as he played masterful emotional renditions of Bach, Chopin, and of course, Beethoven. It lives in my mind and body as a singular moment of perfection evolving to become even more incredible as he played a piece I didn’t recognize. It made all the hair stand up on my body, with literal spine chilling sounds and vibrations.

When he stopped playing, I felt the silence. The lack of vibrations felt much like it does when a lover stops touching your body after a tender moment. You feel the absence of their finger tips as much as you did the caress. 

I crawled out from underneath the piano snaking up right in front of him between his legs. 

“What was that?!” I asked eagerly bouncing up.

“Just something I—“ he stammered a bit, turning bright red. “I’ve been playing again since you ask me about it.”

“That was awesome! I loved it.” I stood up, hugging him energetically. He was still sitting at the piano bench so his head came right against my hefty chest. 

“Thank you for playing that was amazing. What are you gonna call it?” I asked looking down, using his name.

“I dunno. Maybe bright colors— and naked ladies?” He whispered, hugging me back but not letting go instead nuzzling against me.  

Then, he stood up, staying very close, and of course, we kissed. 

“I have to go now.” He whispered, his hands still wrapped up in my hair after that marvelous moment. 

I pulled him closer again while tugging his hair. "Sleep is for the weak."

“There is no school tomorrow, bank holiday or some nonsense, so I have to be home and be awake for everyone. I don’t want to go.” 

“Ok.” I reluctantly broke from the embrace. “But make sure you take the painting tonight, silly. And it stays anonymous.”

“A deal’s a deal.” He grinned. "Who would believe me anyway?" 

“Well, as you say a deal’s a deal.”

I left town the next morning. 

Tonight discovering he is well, happy, thriving, and still playing piano (and a recent grandfather!) has been a true gift.

“Thank you for helping me realize who I wanted to be and btw you are still my favorite American.” This made my heart soar. I always wondered if he remembered us fondly.

I thanked him for teaching me about his culture and food, a passion I’ve carried with me ever since. Knowing this man led to me having an open mind and more importantly an open heart to people from completely different worlds.

I asked if I could write about our little story, telling about our forgotten moments by the baby grand. He said yes, but only if I keep his identity anonymous. 

I messaged back. "Of course, a deal's a deal." 

"But now, long lost Bianka, I have to wonder what other stories you keep 'close to your chest'" 

So, I guess he does really remember us fondly, after all. 

Really, my friend could be the story of any immigrant, any refugee, and/or green card holder, working too hard, for too little, unappreciated and underestimated by his American neighbors but struggling to make a better life for his family and everyone around him.

Whenever I hear to people bitch about immigrants I think about my experiences like this one and just think how these pathetic haters will never know just how much they are missing out on.

Because we are really lucky in the US to have people from vast fascinating cultures from all over the world coming here to live and work among our (at times) boring homogenous stifling, status quo strip mall of a culture. 

When you scare these new people and good families deporting them to unsafe destinies you are committing a grave injustice, of course. 

But you are also ruining communities for this less obvious reason too. My friend was the best caregiver anyone ever had but he should have been a classical piano master performing all his life but war changed all that.

He was willing to work the night shift as a CNA and be the strong caring man for fragile old people even after spending his own days caring for his family, because he saw those patients as his family too.

It's really too bad we can't as a culture do the same with the immigrants wanting to be here these days. They are family, our shared human family. 

Nationalism and exclusion always stem from forgetting we are shared human family. Everyone on earth is your cousin, no really they are- look it up.

We are the all the same and if we must judge each other, it should be our hearts and minds, not the random location of our birth, which no one gets to chose.

I feel we are expelling a lot of the magic of human existence by allowing these stupid scare tactic deportations that are frightening people just trying to live a good life which is a hard enough struggle for us all, eh cousin?

The Enya Tax

Originally written June 22nd  2020

Tonight I paid the Enya tax. I didn’t have to; I do it voluntarily to remind me of a particular time in my life. As a very young woman, on my own for the first time, I believed there was no such thing as a good guy. This was because of a great deal of trauma I experienced. I knew about lots of trauma from other women too. I was experiencing for the first time how the pain is still with you all the time even when the persons who caused the original harm are gone. To be honest I was in a tailspin of destructive behavior. I sought out harsh things, I drank too much, and I didn’t let anything touch my heart.

Then one day I met Mr. Right. Literally, his last name was Wright. He was the good friend of a friend. They were both guys I had met at punk and metal shows in a mosh pit. Both were decent musicians. Long haired, unacceptably weird, and exactly the sort of people I felt most comfortable getting a bit wild and destructive around. In short, my people.

One night after an evening of heavy drinking at a show I stumbled home in a cab with them to their apartment.We sat around talking about the show, dissecting the music while one of the guys made up the couch for me to sleep. Neither knew I played violin or that I knew anything about music. They both looked at me quizzically when I answered correctly "what key was that song in?"referring to the night's performer's original music. So I owned up to my fiddle playing and other musical experience.

Upon this discovery Mr. (W)Right ran to his room and returned with a mix tape he had made he wanted me to hear. Our mutual friend rolled his eyes and was shaking his head,"Not this again."

This guy, Mr. Wright, was literally the best looking man I had ever seen in real life. Long dark hair, tall, with perfect teeth and a warm smile which betrayed his otherwise carefully chosen cold vampiresque style. He was in two local rock bands with a stage presence that reminded me of David Bowie. I expected some obscure goth music or maybe King Crimson to come blasting from the hifi which took up an entire wall and place of pride in the tiny apartment.

It was Enya. Like a whole mix tape of Enya and Clannad. I was lying there on the sofa speechless when he asked me “So do you think you could play on some stuff similar to this?” I laughed and said sure and asked had he written anything. He pulled out notes, and tabs and scribbled sheet music from the coffee table, eagerly showing me.

I looked over, still wondering when the joke was coming. “So why do you like this stuff?” I asked, trying not to dampen his enthusiasm as Enya, which I considered the “woodland creature” elevator music of the day, played on.

“It’s like another world: another complete and different world from my own.” He looked up from his pages. “And that’s what I want my music to do.” He looked totally serious. “I want to make something so it’s its own thing - it is the mood maker.”

“So you’re willing to pay the Enya tax?” I asked. “The fact that literally every other musician will think you are soft in the head and a corny cheeseball,” I said rather teasingly.

“Yes, because I learn something different every time I listen to something I don’t understand.” He blushed. “Plus fuck what anyone else thinks.” 

Later, after we had all had many more drinks, Mr.(W)Right was tucking me into the couch when I tried to kiss him. He stopped me gently.“Oh you’re great, but I don’t do that.” He petted my head. “Kiss me when you’re sober.”

The next day they were both gone to their day jobs as breakfast cooks. I stumbled into the kitchen - pleased to see they had left me some coffee - and then to the bathroom where a note with my name in calligraphy was tied to a bottle of bubble bath.

“We cleaned the tub. Take a bath. And pay the Enya tax. The tape is rewound, just press play.”

So I did, and as I slipped into the bubbles holding my coffee I for the first time imagined really good men could exist and they might even be worth getting to know as more than just friends. I never did kiss him. But, literally every time I hear Enya or Clannad I think about him. And I still have the feeling the world could be filled with good people I haven’t met before who are worth knowing.

I still need to be reminded of that feeling from time to time. So thanks Mr. (W)Right, wherever you are. I hope you are out there happily making music that is its own thing.

Broken Ones

Originally written on April 17th 2020

I am tired, too tired to convince you that other people you don’t know have a life important enough that your shopping trip to a big box store doesn’t matter, nor does your fishing trip or ball game, or "right to gather."

I am tired, too tired to spend my energy and my words defending my position from the safety of my home while my nurse friends grieve for strangers who die alone.

I am tired, too tired to argue with anyone who thinks jobs and money are greater than the lives and well being of other human beings as bags full of bodies are cooling in trucks in my city because the business of death is stretched over capacity.

I am sick, too sick when I remember what death smells like, when I wish you could smell it too.

But the trucks are cold, too cold, just like you.

I am tired, too tired to try to save you from our sadness as the graves are being dug, as parts of life you have yet to know try to shout a warning to you, a warning you refuse to hear.

I am angry, too angry, and I think you should suffer and maybe die for your stupidity because you deserve to be six feet under if you can’t stay six feet apart.

I am ashamed, too ashamed when I remember you won’t die without some nurse, or a doctor, or a child, a friend, or your family crying when you pass, even in death you’ll take a toll on someone else. You'll be a scar on another's heart.

I am scared, too scared that you and people like you will make this last longer. My friend’s orphan children will grow up with you telling them how their parents’ lives didn’t matter if you survive the illness that killed them in their prime.

I am tired, too tired for this to last longer but I will not break with my resolve because I believe in love, not hate. We will not join your parade of selfish crime.

I am sad, too sad to hate you, to fear you, to hope for you, to argue with you, but it doesn’t mean I agree with you. You will not break me. You are the broken one.

Why can’t you stay home- you get the comfort of choosing to be safe. Why? 

You are the broken one.

You are lucky, too lucky because you haven’t had someone die.

You are careless, too careless if you don’t see why.

You are greedy, too greedy to let this time pass by.

You are foolish, too foolish to see the effects of your greed, your racism, your nasty self-appointed superiority.

You are the problem, the real problem with humanity.

I am tired, too tired to tell each one of you this every time you appear but I’ll say it this one time.

I'll say it this time, this time for solace, and solidarity.

You will not break me. You are the broken one.

The price is high, too high to let you risk us all.

My love is fierce, too fierce to forgive what you have done.

My memory is long, too long to forget who you are.

You are the broken ones.

Becoming One of the Sick

Originally written May 7th 2020

This morning I was struck by something I haven’t really let myself think about for a while because I get so angry. There’s a very big disconnect between people who have suffered chronic illnesses and/or survived serious illness versus the people who haven’t ever really been sick or had the threat of serious illness until now.

I can’t remember the last time I had a perfectly healthy day. But I do remind myself often how lucky I am to even be alive and not suffering as much as many do. I remind myself that I have been given the chance to continue surviving by using my mind and being careful with my body so that I can thrive, even in a continuous state of less than good health.

This new plague doesn’t just kill people. It makes some people permanently damaged and some people will never fully recover. Once your health is damaged that’s it, folks. You can heal sometimes but usually you just have to adapt to the new suffering. And health issues have a way of compounding themselves over time.

Sure, you say, you know that. Well, here’s something you might not know: the illness itself is less difficult to deal with than the people around you. When you are Sick (and we’ll capitalize it so it’s a group) you become a second class citizen. Truly, people view you as damaged goods, and/or they pity you. Some people even blame you for being ill as if you got that way because of something you didn’t do right. They pretend to care but truly most people can’t bear to even hear about what’s happening to you, let alone empathize or be helpful. You are a burden in the minds of most people whether they admit it or not.

Even some of the people you date will focus their opinion of you around your Sick status. Some of their mothers will hope you are a phase and not marriage material. Their friends will consider you too much baggage. People will applaud your partner(s) for being so kind because they are in a relationship with one of the Sick. And those are the nice people.

You'll have to try to hide your suffering most of the time - at least in the beginning - if you want a new job, new friends, or even a loan from a bank. Sick people are the last to get chosen if they are chosen at all. If you get that job you'll have to never take a sick day because your secret could come out. You'll work bone-tired everyday and spend large amounts of energy masking your suffering with pleasantries while you listen to often trivial problems of your co-workers. Your friends will complain about the sniffles or that massive hangover they have and you'll stay silent about shitting blood or the new strange stabbing pain you hope is a phase but darkly worry is the next fresh hell.

Eventually they will figure out you are one of the Sick. Then you'll have a whole new pile of pretending to do.

"You don't look sick" is one I get all the time with the implied "she can't really be that ill" in their mind.

People who haven’t been sick a day in their life will feel now is the time to impart their sage advice they read on the internet about your disease, or how some cousin of theirs did this thing so “you’ll be fine too” if you just do that. 

You don’t have to be one of the Sick. You could change it if you just do what they tell you. You have already tried and nothing really works because the truly ill can’t be healed by any amount of magical cures, prayers, yoga, pills, positive thinking, essential oils, and/or fancy diets. Sure, some of those things can help, but not cure.

You will wake many days only able to think about pain and about your shortcomings. Sometimes, you secretly wish to die so you don’t have to figure out how to live through all this.

But you find ways to cope. You find people who are kind and understanding. You commiserate with other damaged Sick people who want to survive. You let it be the new normal because you have no choice. You seek joy in the small things. You accept things you can’t do anymore and you search for new achievable things to make life full. Eventually, you come to understand that the healthy don’t mean to be so annoying and unthinking, they just can’t understand at all what it is like to be you.

If you are lucky the illness teaches you how privileged you have been; if it doesn’t you become a bitter sick old fuck that nobody gives a damn about and people are just waiting for you to die. But regardless of what you become - either a grateful, joyful person who makes the best of it or a sick, old fuck who is a horror to be around - you will not be the same again and many people will always view you as expendable and as "less than."

We, as a society, have made it a very long time, relatively speaking, since the last airborne plague affected the whole world. Those lessons from people who survived those times are being ignored because no one alive really remembers it. I guess the closest thing people might remember that compares is Polio. I am not really sure many people are around to talk about that either.

What we have left is people who are survivors of chronic illness to try to teach us how to view this situation. But, alas, it seems no one is listening to us because they view us as expendable and/or that we are just trying to make it safer for ourselves. How wrong they are! It hasn’t been safe for us for a very long time- we are just trying to prevent the rest of you from destroying yourselves and becoming one of the Sick.

I get insanely angry about how ungrateful people are for the health they do have. Many of us who are sick didn’t get a warning that this would happen to us. We didn’t get a CHOICE. You can choose to avoid this illness, at least long enough to have real treatments that could mitigate the extreme damage it could do.

I think almost everyone will eventually be exposed to this virus just as we are the flu, but if we can use our brains and be strategic about when and where that eventuality occurs the chances for survival and good health are high.

It’s not a choice only between life and death. Becoming one of the Sick is not something you want to choose because you need a pint, want to go shopping, go to a show, or want to go to a beach. You don't want to look back to realize that was the last time you felt good doing those things.

Please be careful out there. Use a damn mask and stay at least 6 feet apart, because 6 feet under isn't the only consequence.

I've survived this long under some very trying circumstances and it doesn't make me expendable because I am one of the Sick. It makes me useful, valuable, and most of all aware of how precious life really is even when it seems unbearable.

I am not Sick because of some shitty choices I made- though even if I were that doesn't mean I deserve suffering. Don't think that you can't become sick just because your health is good and you take zinc, eat well, and exercise. You aren't invincible and neither are your children.

Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay sane. This will pass.

Long Past Due

Originally written July 7th 2020

I used to work in a geriatric home with about 40 high care patients- most were grandparents. One of my favorite ladies was not a grandparent and had been single her whole life. After a year I came to know her very well and no one came to visit her the whole year, so I wanted to be there for this lady beyond the "care" aspect of my job.

She was so funny and kind under a grumpy surface attitude. She was 96 years old, living out her last days in a too-white and fluorescent lit tiny room, but she was sharp and engaged whenever I chatted with her. She used to try to get me to sneak her the half burnt coffee on her wing because she was forbidden to have any. I did it more times than I should have because she was convincing- always saying "at 96 if the coffee takes me that'd be an easy way to go."

One afternoon we were talking about her life before the home while everyone else was watching "Jeopardy!" in the next room. I asked her why didn't she have children or a husband, because in her day that was very uncommon. It had to have been a choice. She got silent for a few seconds and looked off distantly.

So I began to apologize and she shushed me. "No, no, girl I am just trying to figure out how to tell you the truth without making that spark of yours dampen." So I waited for her to speak.

"When I was a real little girl my father died in the Great War." I said how sorry I was.

"He wutten' very old- only 18. We didn't get to bury him. There wutten' any funeral just one of them supper things when everyone brings bad casseroles for a couple of days."

"My pregnant momma lost her baby from crying too much and my little brother died of flu. Then my momma's sister died of flu, the one who helped watch us when he was sick. My momma thought it was her fault. Two years later she killed herself because she couldn't understand why God had forsaken her." She had a tear streaming down her cheek. "She couldn't feed me or watch over me on her own but she couldn't live with giving me up." The expression on her face when she turned back to looking at me was one I had not seen- it was cold and hot all at once. "I lived in an orphanage until I was old enough to work on my own."

"When was this?" I asked, because it had never occurred to me someone could have lived through both wars as a young woman.

"Them was King Roosevelt days," she told me. That's what they all called him. Years later another extremely old lady I met used the same phrase about him.

"I was too poor to get anyone to like me- everybody was poor then but I wasn't the prettiest girl around neither. But when I was 27, becoming an old maid- like they used to say- I met a young fella when I got a job working as a cleaner at a hotel. I literally was becoming an old maid." She laughed dryly.

"He was a busboy. We was sweet on each other. We was getting married. Then he went to war against Hitler and he never came back. Germany took the only two men I ever loved."

"After all them hard years I decided I was better off not to get too close to anybody because they would die before me. And I could already understand how my momma felt when she killed herself and I didn't have no baby yet. 'Course I couldn't totally stick to that. Now I am 96 and everyone I've ever known is dead. All my friends passed on before me. I am the only one who remembers most of them, because you become friends with other people without kids when you don't have kids for some reason; not everybody, but most of my closest friends had no children or their children died before they did. Most of them I didn't get to tell them how much they mattered to me before they died."

It was the saddest thing I had ever heard. "I am sorry. I didn't mean to bring all of this up." I apologized. She was the funniest woman of all the people there so I was surprised by this deeply grief-filled past. I was a teenager; now I know it's all too common for the funniest person to have a tough story connected to their character.

"No, no, girl. It is good to remember them to you. It affected you- I can see that. You will remember them and me when I am gone too. You are that kind of girl. You'll survive just like me- I know I can always pick the ones that will make it. I went to work for the orphanage after that for 15 years before I became a nurse just like you are going to do. I always knew which little ones had enough fire to keep burning. Someday maybe you will tell everyone about me in one of them stories I always catch you scribbling on the evening shift when you are stuck in the hall with all these rotting old farts."

"Do you regret not having children or a husband?" I asked.

"Sometimes I regretted every breath I took. But no. Even with such a life alone, I made friends and things got better. I had a good life. A life of my mind and one with a heart still."

"Do you believe in God still?" I couldn't resist asking her because I had already changed my beliefs by then. "No, not really but as the preachers always say 'He must believe in me,' 'cause I am still here. I hope there is a heaven, but I am satisfied with the life I lived if there is not. Every day we get is a gift."

I wrote that conversation down that night on my break. I just found it as I was packing up my most prized journals this morning for our move back west. She was one of those ladies I have been lucky enough - as has happened many times in my life - to meet and be changed. So I thought it was long past time to share her story that I scribbled down more than 30 years ago.

Every single day we get to live is really a gift. I never knew I would understand her perspective so keenly as I do now. I hope you are all taking care to remember to tell each other how much the other people in your life mean to you, just in case you don't get a chance before they die. It never feels bad to hear it.

Much love to you all.