Every Mother’s Day, when so many people on Facebook post
pictures and wish their mothers a happy day, I hurt for the children of mothers
who died way too young. I’m sure it’s because of one child and one mother in
particular. My beautiful young friend, Rachel, lost her mama when no child
should lose a parent. I lost one of my dearest friends at the same time, when
her mom, my friend, Mindy, was taken from us. Rachel was only 12 years old, and
her brother, Brian, was 10, I think. There’s no way to put a positive spin on this.
It sucked then. It does now. It always will.
Having said that, however, I have to say that when I think
about Mindy, which I truly do every day, I don’t feel sadness. I don’t feel
pain anymore. I have SO many wonderful memories that most of the time I’m
smiling, and sometimes there’s even a snort-laugh. The girl was a riot.
Here’s the bad part of the story. Let’s just get it out of
the way. When Mindy was 36 years old, she started feeling extremely tired, very
sick and generally awful. She had all kinds of tests leading up to that
horrible day when I heard the worst three words I have ever heard in my life,
“I have leukemia.”
She didn’t just have leukemia. She had the worst, most
aggressive form of it. The next 13 months were awful for her, and we lost her
shortly after her 37th birthday in 2001. It blows me away that it was
so long ago. I can’t believe it’s been 13 years because I could swear she was
just here. Maybe it’s because she still is such a huge part of my life.
A number of years after she died, I made a major decision
and then acted on it. My first thought after all those years was that I had to
tell Mindy. After all that time, she was the first person I wanted to call. You
don’t need to worry about me. I knew she was gone. But she was the first one I
wanted to tell.
Ok, here’s some more sadness, but I’m going to tell it
anyway, because it was also very meaningful to me. On what was to be her last
night with us, I got up to her hospital room, hoping against hope that what I had
heard wasn’t true. I walked into the room to see her family sitting around her
bed, and I got a horrible kick in the gut when I realized I had gotten the
correct information.
But in the middle of all that sadness, a lovely thing
happened. All the things that you would expect to go through your head were
going through mine…..how could this really be happening, how could we all go on
without her, how could I be there for Rachel, what would the kids do without
her, etc., etc. Rachel was sitting next to the bed and holding her mama’s hand.
When she saw me, she reached out with her other hand, and I took it in mine. The
symbolism of that moment had a powerful effect on me, as I realized I would
always be connected to Mindy through Rachel. If ever there was a sign, that was
mine. I knew then that as hard as it would be, we would be ok.
Not long before that night, I was beginning to accept that
the worst might be happening. and it dawned on me that if Mindy’s ex-husband,
Peter, was raising the kids, I might not be a part of their lives anymore. He
had no obligation to me whatsoever. So after a fair amount of fretting over
this, I toughened myself up; I took many, many
deep breaths; and I called him. He was always just Mindy’s ex to me, and we
weren’t friends, although I wouldn’t say we were enemies. He was just always
her ex, and she was always my friend. So I didn’t know what to expect or how
the conversation would go. I knew I needed to talk to him, and that’s about as
far as I had thought it through at the moment.
It turned out we had a very long, serious and sometimes emotional
heart-to-heart. We talked about the past, and we agreed we needed to move
forward for the sake of the kids. I told him I wanted him to know that no
matter what he might think, I would always be 100% supportive of him, and I
meant it.
I won’t go into the rest of what we said, but when we hung
up, I’d say we were friends, or if anything, we were a team, with both of us
focused on what would be best for the kids. He said something that really
touched me. “I know,” he said, “that every bit of compassion and kindness my
children have is totally because of Mindy.”
And again, I knew we’d be ok. And we were.
Shortly after Mindy died, I had a dream about her. I don’t
remember what it was about, except that we were so happy to see each other, and
we gave each other a huge, wonderful hug. When I woke up, I was happy, and then
I remembered why. I can’t describe the feeling that washed over me except to
say it was a peace I don’t think I’d ever known. And you can believe whatever
you want, but I know absolutely without a doubt that Mindy was telling me she
was ok.
I really intended for this not to be sad or emotional, and I’m
afraid I haven’t done a great job of that. So, I’m switching gears to tell you
what a joy she was. Everyone who had ever met her loved her. It was that
simple. You couldn’t help it. She had this amazing ability to laugh at herself.
She was a beautiful, kind, talented, smart, lovely person, but she never took
herself too seriously. She had an uncanny ability to be our own Lucy Ricardo.
She spilled coffee everywhere and on everything, she often tripped over
nothing, and she had these natural facial expressions that could make you
double over laughing in an instant. At one of our fall festivals at the forest
preserve, she dressed up as a jack-o-lantern and handed out candy. I’m not at
all sure how this came about, but there she was, in pouring rain, handing out
candy with this “why the hell am I doing this” expression, and everyone loved
her.
Another thing that you just had to love about her…..she
always meant to do things but never quite got around to them. Here’s a classic.
The night before her wedding to Tom, she announced that she still needed to buy
shoes. She was getting married HOURS later, and she hadn’t gotten around to
buying shoes! So, on her wedding day, we were doing what all brides do. We were
at the mall, trying to find some shoes to go with her gown. Only Mindy. When we
told the salesperson she needed shoes for her wedding, the woman got very
excited and asked when she was getting married. Mindy looked at her watch and
said, “Uhhh, in about four hours.”
One of her finest moments was the night she was introduced
to Father [can’t remember his name, so we’ll say] Joe at a fancy reception with
lots of people around, and because they had another friend they called
“Father,” she went along with what she thought was a joke and said, “Well,
hello! I’m Mother Teresa!” Not long after that someone said, “Hey, Father Joe!
How are things going at St. Matthew?”
It was hard to top that, but there was also the night we met
Scott Studwell, who we learned after the fact was a former Illini football star
who went on to play for the Vikings and was Pro All American for several years.
Yeah, it was brutal. I think the words “So how long did it take you to come up
with THAT name?” and “I bet you looked really cute with those horns on your
head” were spoken. After I went home and told Dave, who informed me that he was,
in fact, a huge football star, I called Mindy, and she picked up the phone groaning,
“I know! My brother just told me the same thing!” [Side note: Scott Studwell
was a very classy guy who thought the whole thing was hilarious.]
I could go on and on. I really could. And that doesn’t even
count all the stories I can’t repeat here. She truly did brighten the world.
There’s even a garden at Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve in Mahomet that is
dedicated to her, and the plaque reads:
Mindy Harrington Memorial Garden:
a symbol of the beauty
she brought to the world
I’ve wanted to write about Mindy for a long time because she
was so amazing and I was so lucky to be her friend. I’m also writing about her because
knowing her changed me. Losing her broke me for a while, but it made me
stronger in the end. My kids noticed I stopped sweating the small stuff. I
realized that also. Since this happened, I’ve learned when I feel overwhelmed to
compare what seems so awful at the moment to the day of the three horrible words.
It’s amazing when I do that, how much doesn’t really matter, so I can save my
strength for the really bad things, and let the others go. Losing her seemed to
put everything into perspective for me, and my priorities were made right. I
felt I owed it to her to live a better life.
And living my life, loving my people and doing what I can in
my own small way to make the world better are top of the list. Laughing is
right up there also, along with experiencing pure joy and appreciating every
day I’m given.
Of course, you can’t see this, but I just started smiling as I reread that last paragraph. I realized I just described Mindy. I knew I carried her with me, but I didn’t realize until now just how much. What a great thing this is. Without really noticing, I managed to keep with me all the best things about her. And I have to say I’m pretty talented on the coffee spilling too!
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