Losing Theresa

Terry’s apartment in the city was, of course, small. You would enter the foyer of the building at 81st and 3rd Avenue, and if the small elevator was not working, you would make your way up the four flights of narrow, ceramic tiled stairs, ringed with a rout iron banister. We moved Theresa into that apartment that way. I remember being in that small elevator, crammed next to the vertical futon and some guy who was helping – it may have been one of her brothers-in-law. Once you went inside, there was a small kitchen area on the left, a smaller bathroom straight ahead, and a larger room that served as her bedroom / living space. It was small, but I loved it. The exposed brick on one side of the apartment was cut by a long, narrow window and a painting, similar in size. There was a bookcase in the corner and another one on the adjacent wall. Her futon would be there, usually open and decorated with scattered books, and there was a round table in the other corner, always dressed beautifully with a tablecloth, a vase of flowers, and more books. I can remember her saying that she hadn’t read a novel in years; they simply did not interest her. She read every spiritual and self-help book there was, not because she was in dire need of help, but it seemed to be part of her quest for God.

That was, in a way, the core of our friendship too. We met, the first time, in the catacomb-like basement of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. They were having a lecture series on young adults in the Catholic church. At some point, either during an intermission or at the end, in the long anteroom, packed with people from the lecture, I walked over to a large coffee pot. She was kind of standing there in a way that I would come to know was common for her, not awkward, but not needing to be conversing. She was simply watching everyone and half smiling at them. We must have exchanged some small talk about the lecture or the speaker for a while, but I don’t remember that. I do remember that it turned out we were both in 12-step programs. It was a great conversation, as they would almost all be for a very long time, and at the end, we exchanged phone numbers and said we should grab a coffee some time.

I can remember having her number on my desk at work for a few days, uncomfortable to call. I’m not really sure why I did. I think something difficult happened with a guy or my job… who knows; but I called her to talk. She was just magical to talk to. She was somehow fully engaged in listening. Many years later, I remember being on a long car ride and sharing some very difficult story from my marriage. The story seemed endless, with many loops and nuances, and it took a long time to tell. When we arrived at whatever our destination was, finally, I pulled the car in, and finishing the story at that exact moment, I said, crying, “That’s it. That’s the whole horrible thing,” and Theresa looked at me with such great love, and tilting her head slightly to the left said, “Yes….yes…” I remember kind of waking up in that moment, and from some omniscient place beyond the hurt of that moment, realizing that those were the first words she had said the whole time. That she had listened and listened and listened, and that her understanding was profound and visible, but she had not offered any feedback or commentary whatsoever. She had simply listened. And I remember consciously thinking, “Oh my God, that … is … so …. big – to simply listen. How did she do that?” And I remember wondering if I could learn to hear that way – if it were an acquirable skill.

Everyone would talk about that, you know, after she died. How she would listen to people. And that none of us had ever known anyone like that.

She was, in many ways, like her apartment. She didn’t like to cook, and so that small kitchen without even a table spoke volumes. She was petite and beautiful in a very peaceful way. Her hair was varying shades of strawberry red, and it was baby fine. She would worry that it was so fine it was almost thin looking, but of course, at the end, she probably would have given anything for that hair. The television was so small in that apartment, that I wondered for years if she had one – I think it even had an antenna, but the books were ever present, bookmarked, or open to various pages. She seemed to always look effortlessly beautiful.

She had a large family, two sisters and a brother, all of whom were married with children of their own, and her mom, Claire. Her father had passed away when she was only twenty or twenty-one, having died, of all things, of brain cancer. I always wondered if there were some strange karmic tie between them.

One time, Tommy and I brought our friend Brannin to New York, and we all had lunch at her apartment, around that round table. We went to the movies after that, and saw Analyze This with Billy Crystal. We laughed out loud so hard in some places that we honestly missed entire segments of dialogue. My stomach muscles hurt for a week, and to this day, my husband and I have an inside joke, “Hey, Jelly, you wanna fresh one?” and one of us will play slap the other’s face. Tommy would repeat, “They call me the Fuckin’ Doctor,” in his Greek accent literally for years.

Being Theresa’s friend was liberating. You were one hundred percent confident in her acceptance of you, frailties and all. We would talk about things like the eternal soul and Hinduism and God’s love and heaven. After she got sick she wondered if there were a God at all. I assured her that she had to feel that way, it was almost necessary. And I told her to rest in the arms of my belief and to not worry.  It was all okay.

And when it was, decidedly not okay, we would do this thing my Aunt Barbara taught us. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Take another. Let it out slowly. Take another. Hold it. Exhale. Take one more and hold it. Hold it. Right there. That is your center. That is what you are. You are the infinite space between breaths. Be in this moment completely, and love this life. Just for this moment, for today, you are alive.

Toward the very end, one of those moments when everyone was in the hospital room, being cheerful and ludicrous, I remember asking her if she were afraid. She would always shake her head no. But she was waiting by then, waiting and wondering when it would end. And I horrified all around us by saying, “Theresa, it isn’t today.” All conversation and pleasantries stopped and eyes began to turn toward me, and I thought that maybe Joy would have a heart attack. “It’s soon, Terry. But it isn’t today. And it isn’t tomorrow. So rest. Just for this moment, you are alive. Love this. Love the people around you. Rest in us.”

Can I do that now? Can I simply rest in her? Can I take that deep breath and hold it, knowing that I am that infinite space between heartbeats. And that somewhere in that eternity is my friend, unscathed, unmarred, alive, loving me? That I am not, as Christ described, “orphaned” by her absence? If this is the goal, I am far from there. I wander my memories and thoughts, hoping to find some thread back to her.

I am, it seems, undeniably spinning, every day, losing Theresa.