November 7, 2002:
Lovely young woman, blond, shy smile, sad gray eyes, seated across from you at a restaurant table. This is your best friend, the soul you've loved most in this life, and while your relationship has had a strong element of turmoil, your love for her has never faltered.
She's changed. It's been several months since you've seen her. There've been events since then. She broke down, was found wandering downtown without knowing where she was. For a time it seemed she'd be institutionalized permanently. Now she's on Prozac. You can't tell if it's the drug or the pain it controls, but her eyes are different. No longer sparkling with the vivid joyfulness you've always associated with her. When she laughs she no longer throws her head back, sending her joy skyward toward heaven. She's permanently tired, as if carrying the weight of defeat; and she no longer casts the subtle gold and peach glow which astonished you so much. She's twenty-five, and it's as if her life has sputtered and faded out.
There are tears gathering in both eyes. She's telling you what triggered her breakdown. Her beloved cat died. Her best friend, the soul she's loved most in this life, and everyone else, except her mother and, sometimes, you, were a pale and distant second.
Her father, normally a rough and dangerous man, did a tender thing. He buried her in the garden below the bedroom window, so that she'd always be close to his grieving daughter's childhood.
The tears spill. She appreciates her father's gesture, but the memory of her loss overwhelms her. With a forlorn I-am-a-little-girl voice that climbs an octave as it breaks she says, "You know how much she hated to get dirty."
I was so angry that nobody told me of her troubles. Gently I asked her sister, "Why didn't you call?" I would have quit my job and camped on the hospital floor.
She said, rather coldly I thought, "Do you believe you have a right to be informed?"