Sending prayers

I called a friend yesterday whose actual voice I hadn't heard in about five years. Facebook yeah, but her voice...the melodies that rang from her belly...five years. I glanced at some of Facebook posts and noticed that she had been in the hospital and that she was home.

I called her yesterday. Lola. Sweet Lola. She told me that she had recently been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I am in denial. Even typing that I misspelled terminal brain cancer so many times I'm wondering what's wrong with me.

She said she was having lunch with a friend of hers and her vision started fading, then her hearing. She was taken to a hospital and they began tests to see if she was having a heart attack. "It's not my heart!" She told them.

And it wasn't. After an MRI they saw the tumor. I am sending prayers for Lola and if you are reading this, please pray too. Pray for peace and healing for Lola. This vegan, yoga instructing, poet, dancing, beautiful woman whose presence has blessed this planet.

II. Donna (D.W.)

I took a long nap after my conversation with Lola. I fell asleep thinking about how incredibly fragile our bodies are. How short our time is on this Earth. We never know what someone is going through. We never know how long we have with the ones we love, and the ones we don't.

My cell phone vibrating on my lap woke me from my nap. It was Donna. My very good friend. "D.W. is dead." She told me. "He overdosed and he's dead." D.W. is her nephew and was twenty years old. Too many of those years using drugs and alcohol. Over $50,000 in those years spent in rehab and too many tears to even begin to measure. But mostly, way too much potential to go another way. Now this. He was "drinking" with some friends and passed out on the floor. They didn't know he was dead until the next morning.

I am posting this blog because I want it to mean something. I want my prayers, our prayers to mean something. Our prayers for Lola. Our prayers for Donna and her family and friends. Our prayers for the young men drinking with D.W.

D.W.'s parents were not speaking much, Donna told me. "And this is what happens when parents won't put down their own stuff and connect with each other for their children." I want this to mean something. Even if it means that we mothers, you fathers put down our stuff and connect with each other for our children.