Alisa

If you were to read it like a book, it sounds a bit like the beginning of a love story. "She saw her across the campus....sitting alone on a bench under the shade of a tree eating her half-sandwich taken from the brown paper sack that sat on her lap. She had seen her earlier that day in class and noticed her dress. White and blue striped on the top with a solid white skirt. And now she sits here alone. Is it because she wants to be alone, or is it because she has no-one to sit with...."

I received a phone call a couple of days after my mother's funeral. "Hey! Would you be up for letting me take you out for a bite to eat and then go over to watch Natalie and Elisabeth's kids so they can all go on a date and we can catch up while we babysit?" I was flooded with gratitude. To do something so opposite of going to the hospital, or planning a funeral, or just sitting in a stupor and feeling the occasional wave of grief wash over me sounded glorious. "Yes! I can't wait!"

She showed up to my door, smiled her usual ear-to-ear smile, we hugged, then settled in quickly to easy conversation; as she mostly listened and let me process and re-count the events of the previous week. Those difficult days leading up to the passing and laying to rest of my mother. Dave picked up take-out so we could just keep visiting uninterrupted. I finished pouring my heart out to her, we ate and then drove over to watch the grandies.

As a very shy, introverted young child, I struggled to make friends. When I'd become despondent over my lack of friends, Mama would say, "Better to have only one really good friend or even no friends at all, than lots of bad friends! And don't forget, you have your little brother to play with!" Sure Mama....I'll just play with Tonka trucks and match-box cars until I'm graduated from High School, I'd pout.

And then that fateful day on the campus of Mesa High School. No "good" friends. Eating alone under a tree, because that's far less painful than feeling alone in a crowd. She and the two friends walking beside her plopped themselves down on the bench right next to me. "Hi! I'm Alisa! I think you're in my Seminary class aren't you?" And that is the story of how I met my best friend. She remembers the dress I was wearing. I remember her fearless, outgoing, open friendliness. Almost four decades later, it feels like yesterday.

1983 Our wardrobes doubled the day we met. She was such a great dresser and I....well I struggled.

Alisa was a Senior and I a Junior. We were pretty much inseparable. She jokes that she was "like a stray cat" at our house. "If you feed it and give it shelter, it won't go away." She was really more of an extra daughter/sister. Adored by my parents, and my little brother liked her because she didn't fight with him.

Her family moved back to Georgia after she graduated High School. I was beyond sad. We wrote letters back and forth frequently, she even made cassette-tape recordings to mail to me, and occasionally she or I would splurge on a long late-night long-distance telephone call. (You young people can have your parents explain how all that works with having to pay for a long-distance phone-call. It was a thing).

Eventually Alisa had enough of small-town Georgia life and moved back to Arizona. I was elated! I'd had a bad break-up with a boyfriend and desperately needed her in-person presence in my life. She moved in with her grandma and uncle. We had jobs, went to dances, spent the summer in my parents back-yard pool, and dated cute guys. I got engaged. She got ready to serve a mission for our church. Life was simple and beautiful.

1984 right after I got married and right before she left for her mission to Houston, TX. Alisa, her little sister Cindy, and me

After the birth of my first-born Natalie, she came to the hospital to visit us. She entered the room..."Our first baby!!!" she exclaimed! And that is how it has been to this day. My children don't know life without her.

Soon after she returned from her mission she also married. She and Dennis moved away with their baby girl to Flagstaff to attend NAU. We became so busy with the daily demands of young wife-hood and more babies joining our broods, we hardly had time to reflect on how much we missed each other. Now and then, we'd splurge on one of those very expensive long-distance phone calls. Just to keep each other sane. Her new twin babies were in the NICU. That was a very long, expensive call. I asked my mother if she could lend me money to pay for the phone bill that month. She happily paid it. Alisa was her bonus daughter after all.

It would take me a few minutes to think back to how many moves each of our families have made over the year. Often one of us trailing just behind the other. Moving to a new city the other had just exited. It would seem almost cruel. Our children began to have their own important life events. Baby blessings. Baptisms. She'd usually figure out a way to be there for me. Sometimes alone, and sometimes bringing her own growing family with her.

2000. Both of us barely pregnant, and both of us very nauseous. I'm thinking I'm wearing "mom-jeans"? (shoulda kept 'em dangit!)

If I look back with too much detail over our past years together, I start to feel guilty. I realize that I have asked her to do incredibly difficult things for me. We could go weeks, even months without seeing each other, our lives completely consumed with our now large families and the demand and toll that takes making it nearly impossible to even find time to dream about a "girl's night out", let alone make a simple phone call of any decent length.

But when I would make that one phone call. "Alisa, I'm having another baby, can you please be there for the birth so I feel taken care of?" "Alisa, Elisabeth is being baptized, can you please be there and speak at her baptism because I know you'll be able to say the right things that she and the other children will be able to understand and always remember." "Alisa, can you please help me paint some rooms into the house we moved into? Mostly because we just re-located and I feel alone and need you near me?" "Alisa, can you show me how to plant some plants in my yard like you do, because your yard is so beautiful and I want to feel your artistic touch in my yard when I walk in my garden." "Alisa, can you help me reupholster some dirt cheap furniture I bought, because you're so talented and make everything look like a million dollars, but mostly because if you do, I can sit with you and talk about everything under the sun and also because sometimes I am overwhelmed with motherhood and just want to feel like we're teenage girls again." "Alisa......can you come be with me and my family the night we tell our children that we're divorcing? Don't be mad at me....know I know you'd never be mad at me, but no matter how you're feeling about me, I know if you're there my children will feel a little safer. If you're there, the world won't seem quite so out of balance." "Alisa.....will you please come be with me and stay with me while I help my mother pass from this earthly life. Will you weep with me and with my children. Will you speak at her funeral, and say the words that honor her life, because I would just collapse. Will you be my strength. My friend. My sister."

The answer. Always. Always. "Yes".

This morning, Alisa picked me up for a "Girls Day Out". Both our nests our nearly empty now. And now really the only thing besides our different work schedules, is the pull to spend time with our grandbabies. We had a great time. We even did a "Thelma and Louise", and got pulled over for speeding. True gangsters she and I! She said something about it being her birthday. I had completely forgotten. So consumed with the events of last week, I'm not I would have remembered even my own birthday. She said there was nothing she'd rather be doing for her birthday and that it was the best day ever. I believe her. She knows my short-comings, and loves me in spite of them and sometimes even for them.

Happy birthday my beautiful friend! The world is such a better place because you are in it. Thank you for teaching me how to love, how to serve, how to forgive, and how to live.

Thank you for sitting by the lonely girl on the bench.

It's a great love story.

Our ever-growing collection of grandies!