Coming Home - Portrait of a Best Friend

Coming Home - Portrait of a Best Friend


Kay Lynn Heatherton was my very first best friend. My memories of her go all the way back. Her parents and my parents were best friends; they were our landlords. We lived in the same red-brick apartment building on Ridge Road in Gary, and during this time our homes and our home-lives meshed oh-so-comfortably. Our families seemed almost inseparable, like extended-family sharing one home.

I remember my rocking horse in the sun room, “The Arthur Godfrey Show” and “Queen For A Day” playing background on a small-screen black-and-white TV afternoons while my mother rested. I remember bellying-up to the Heatherton family table and being spoon-fed the chicken soup Kay Lynn’s Mom used to make for me often because it was my favorite food and because I was so frail-looking, so sickly, and such a poor eater. I remember our parents playing pinochle, ordering pizzas from out, then laughing loud and long. I remember Kay Lynn’s family reunions that we somehow were invited to, and the taste of the lamb that I always loved. But mostly I remember Kay Lynn and I in the wading pool out back, playing on swings or with toys, or -- as we so often did -- going “visiting.”

Kay Lynn was a year younger than I. She was the youngest of three daughters. Patty, the eldest, seemed the bookish, more serious type. Denise (or “Deenie,” as we called her ) was the incarnation of mischief and rebellion. This kid made “Dennis the Menace” look like an icon. Kay Lynn -- on the surface -- seemed all charm and effervescence. She was a born optimist with an Ever-Ready grin. She was blonde-haired, brown-eyed, and she had this raspy voice which persistently pronounced “s’s” “th,” and then would peal-out a stream of silly giggles.

There were tall, tall sunflowers on the vacant lots along Broadway, and the candy store sold paper pills and hot dog gum which we would split meticulously and then devour through greedy grins. Kay Lynn and I shared so many surface things in common, and yet deep-down we were really very different.

Deenie and I were alike. We were both wired together differently than most kids. We were extremely strong willed, electric children, prone to shrill tantrums, sassing back, and to pushing any adult -- especially our own parents -- over the edge of their endurance just for the overall thrill and creative challenge involved. Deenie started out my life's hero and mentor. Both of us lived for the rush of our own adrenalin!

Deenie and I were also close in age (one year apart), yet somehow I loved Kay Lynn MORE even though she consistently fed me another type of experience -- calm; And kind… Kay Lynn was always this hopeless goody-goody, yet the things she talked me into doing somehow fed my spirit, gave me a deeper kind of thrill, and left me feeling all warm and good inside. Even though she was younger than I, so often I stood in absolute awe of her. I always loved and admired her deeply.

As I mentioned before, Kay Lynn liked to go “visiting”. This was, in fact, a favorite pastime of hers, so every day she and I would traipse the back yards from house-to-house, flat-to-flat, stopping to chat with people who mostly lived alone and didn’t often get visitors. Two of these faces I remember distinctly, yet only one was pleasant and kind: Katy, a plump, cheery, middle-aged lady who’d never married, who always seemed to have fresh baked goodies to offer, and who was always happy to see us; and then there was Grandpa Uran who quickly became the scariest villain in most of my childhood nightmares. He had grimy hands, and he wore greasy, tattered work overalls. His face was always angry and scowling. He seemed old, and was very tall, and thin. He was a retired policeman who tinkered with broken down trucks in his back yard. I remember, there were bars on the windows of his always locked garage. When I asked him why, he told me that he kept kids locked-up in there: BAD KIDS. Well, that was enough to scare me away, because I knew that if anyone deserved to be locked-up in there, it was me. But not Kay Lynn; she had nothing to fear… And so every day she’d beg and bargain to go back. And every day, reluctantly…, eventually…, I’d follow her.

We moved from the Ridge Road Apartments when I was midyear in kindergarten. My parents bought a house, as did hers some months later. The adjustment seemed easy enough -- I made a lot of new friends, yet, though we no longer had daily access, Kay Lynn and I remained very close. For the first several years our families got together all the time, and between times (every single day, in fact) repeatedly, we’d phone.

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“--That’s what!”

Over the years I fell into that little prank of hers on purpose just to entertain her delight, just to hear her giggle.

Our new neighborhood brought me a myriad of new friends. There were maybe a dozen kids my age, and a couple of us became close; And there were "Deenie’s" there too, so the mischief we got into only got bigger and better with age. Yet there was always this loneliness… Maybe because Kay Lynn was my first best friend, because I was so open -- after all, I’d never really been hurt; or maybe because, deeply, she stirred so much admiration in me. I don’t know… I only know that very early-on in my life Kay Lynn utterly impressed me, accepted me, and knew me soul-deep. Over my entire lifetime, only a very few of the relationships I’ve known could ever even come close by comparison.

Another thing: Kay Lynn’s life always seemed to be complicated with medical problems. She was born with badly clubbed feet and, for the first years of her life, had to wear corrective casts on both legs.

Then, when I was about nine, I came home from school one day to find my Mom grief-stricken. Slowly, carefully she told me that Kay Lynn was in the hospital, in a coma, and that she might not live.

Kay Lynn had evidently slipped into a diabetic coma -- which was a real shock since nobody even knew she was diabetic -- and then, days later, after regaining consciousness, she overheard everyone talking about this little boy down the hall who was terminally ill, and who’s parents had abandoned him. This little guy evidently kinda caved-in -- became like-autistic, I’d guess -- and would violently lash out at anyone who even tried to come near him.

Well, the heart of the whole hospital went out to this child, then, and everyone wanted to be the one to draw him out of himself. Yet each attempt was thwarted by hysterical outburst, by another terrible tantrum.

When Kay Lynn heard of him she too visited, yet her approach alone proved so light, so non-threatening. She simply took a book and read to him. She never asked him if he wanted to be read to, nor what he might like to hear. She sat near the door, avoided eye-contact and conversation starters. One child to another she just assumed that a story might be nice, and so she read.

And she went back the next day and read again. And again the day after, and the day after that…

In time, he opened up to her and they became friends. Then, even after she was released from the hospital, every day after school she would visit him. After he died, the Post Tribune Newspaper ran pictures galore plus this beautiful, glowing story naming Kay Lynn, “The Golden Girl: The Golden Angel of Mercy Hospital.”

After the diagnosis of her diabetes, our visits became much more complicated. Busy and complex schedules seemed to conspire, pulling our families more and more apart. Kay Lynn’s daily insulin injections combined with each of our own friends and club commitments pretty much prohibited weekend sleepovers and extended get-togethers. As so often happens, we began to grow apart.

Yet each time we did meet, the fact that our old closeness was still there, was still just as strong, astounded me and renewed my joy. Her every visit, in fact, was always such a heartwarming kind of homecoming -- a coming home to the most precious parts of all that I held good, and to my very best childhood memories.

In high school Kay Lynn introduced me to folk music, to “Peter, Paul, and Mary” especially, and to music that she loved that had pretty, poetic verse. Before a “Beatles,” fan, and then a fairly fickle fan of whatever my friends seemed to be listening to, through “Peter, Paul, and Mary” I found “Simon & Garfunkel”, James Taylor, Amy Grant, and then Michael Card, and my tastes were forever ...altered.

I honestly don’t remember Kay Lynn and I ever talking about God, yet somehow I could just perceive this holiness about her. I somehow understood that the Lord was a critical, pivotal part of her life. Kay Lynn was raised Roman Catholic, attended Saints Peter and Paul grade school, and received the Sacraments of the Church faithfully, yet that was altogether foreign to me. I was raised outside of church -- of any church. My parents both said we were Christians, yet spurned all church affiliation/invitation. In junior high, then, on my own, I began to shop for a comfortable church home. I would ride my bike and attend alone; or sometimes I would tag along with friends/neighbors. This led me to Presbyterianism first; to church services followed by youth group, to me joining their choir, and even coming very near Confirmation.

Two things, however, kept me from joining there wholeheartedly. First, the church foyer was always lined with adult greeters who’s job it was to address you and make you feel welcome. Seeing a kid come in alone must have unnerved them, so as they’d reach for my handshake, smiling warm and wide, they always seemed to ask, “Where’s your parents?“ And then I’d lie (“Oh, they’re at work,“ or “They’re sick”). Because my "big-stick" conscience was so very keen, I'd then I’d sit through the morning service riddled with guilt about lying. But there simply were no short answers to that question, and certainly none that I felt comfortable confiding to strangers.

Secondly, though I always felt good about my involvement there, I never really felt full, complete. It was like being invited to some huge, extravagant dinner and then only tasting the hors d‘oeuvres: Nice -- Real nice! -- but just not enough… And so it was, over time, that my remaining hunger finally led me away…

When I was a senior in high school, Kay Lynn died. Hers was an
accidental death; Prescription medicine she was taking for a simple cold/flue infection reacted with her insulin and, overnight, poisoned her.

My life was seized by a series of shock waves, each one more terrifying than the one before. I could not believe the grip and the strength of my grief! Three times before I had lost and mourned the passing of beloved grandparents, yet nothing in my life ever prepared me for the merciless torrents of this experience. As rich and as full as Kay Lynn had always made me feel, suddenly I felt emptied… The deeply soothing coming home quality our friendship had always given me convulsed violently and turned everything around me and inside me to “lost.”

Helplessly, I watched her family suffer. Sadly, I could no longer bear to be near her parents; they seemed like sad shells of the past, so withered and lost. Every time I even approached, I just knew they expected to see Kay Lynn too; I was so strong a reminder… Kay Lynn’s dad‘s heart was broken so badly by her death that he was never fully recovered. Mike began having heart attacks not long after her death, then died too just a couple years later. Patty and Deenie each entered into marriages, then divorces. You have to remember: I adored these people -- they were as close as my family to me! -- so all of this by-standing, sorting, and struggling to make sense of was …overwhelming.

I lost my faith. Any God who would take someone so good, especially since our world is so very needy, and leave so many innocent and wonderful people to suffer just had to be evil, or impotent, I reasoned. The ‘big stick’ God my parents had tried so hard to impress upon me when I was an unruly kid just had to be the same God that had killed Kay Lynn. -- But why??? Every night in darkness I’d wrestle endlessly with questions I simply could not let go of. I quit eating. I quit sleeping. The constant stress was making me sick -- I was always throwing up. Every area of my life suffered, and I was the only person in the world that seemed to be a total captive to this endless torment.

Then it finally dawned on me: I had stumbled upon the unsolvable, and if there was a God, He really couldn’t care less. I had, after all, given this abundant time and patience, and was no better off than when I started. So I quit. I disowned my fledgling faith, my God. Too polite to be hateful, and to afraid to be direct, I simply turned my back and fled.

Somewhere between the ages of 12 and 15 my "Deenie" streak had left me, which was actually too bad. A touch of the old spunk might have held me a little closer the surface, might have helped my grief pass even a little more quickly.

Yet actually Kay Lynn’s death was the first in a series of major life blows that teetered and collapsed around me in rapid domino fashion making me feel like the ‘Hounds of Heaven’ (or Hell) seemed,always, to be right at my heels.

My Dad was drinking too much. His social drinking had escalated to the point that it was becoming more and more obvious to me and to the whole world around me that he was an alcoholic. My Mom began having a series of mental breakdowns. My parents marriage -- the constant fighting, followed by the silent seasons -- always seemed to be teetering too near the edge of collapse. My brother -- a generally reclusive sort, yet always close to me -- confided that he’s gay. My sister, ten years younger than I, was mostly raising herself. I worried for her and for us all terribly.

My very first real love -- a boyfriend I’d been dating then for 4 ½ years -- and I began to splinter. Slowly, painfully, we broke up.

Then, in college, I met someone new, someone I loved quickly and wholeheartedly, yet someone whom my mother, for no real reason, absolutely despised. The two of us, then, became intent upon controlling my destiny. For a time she and I were forever at each other‘s throats, saying and doing just the most hateful and hurtful things…

Following two years of dating, he and I were about to be married.
BecauseI had to, I put everything on the line for him. Sadly, I knew that my family would not be at our wedding, and yet I made my peace with that. Then just two weeks prior to our wedding he told me he’d just stopped loving me… So, in as dignified a fashion as I could muster, I called everything off. I was, however, utterly crushed, heartbroken, so humiliated…

Helplessly I watched every pillar of my life begin to crumble as it struggled to support it’s own weight, not at all able to offer any help to me.

This incredible low lasted about four years and culminated during the time right after my husband and I began to date. Dave and I were involved in a head-on car accident and were taken by ambulance to the hospital. This was the second severe car accident I’d been involved in in less than six months time. Both times the cars I'd been riding in were all shiny and new, then just a split second later both were mangled heaps. Both times I was a passenger. Both times I felt completely helpless to affect the course of events at all. In the first accident, Dave was not involved, and I -- though I was injured and required some medical follow-up
-- I pretty much walked away. In the second, though Dave was our car’s driver, the collision was completely unavoidable. He was not at fault.

Dave, though hurt too, was treated and released from the hospital that night. Doctors, however, found my injuries extensive. I’d broken my ankle, my jaw, my cheekbone in four places, I was bleeding internally, I had massive facial swelling and liver-luster bruising masked both of my eyes. I also had a brain concussion.

Eventually I was admitted into the hospital and settled into a room. I’d just said goodbye to my horribly frightened parents, sighed deeply, and began to relax into the pillows when a nurse came in with a book in her hands and sat down in the chair right next to my bed. She casually stated that she was just planning to sit there and read awhile. That's when my cynical-self kicked in, and I thought, they just don’t pay people as much as they pay her just to sit by the side of your bed unless they think you might die.

Oh God, TONIGHT I could die!

That night, though I first endured a harrowing panic attack, eventually I resolved my crisis in faith, as it finally it dawned on me that, whether I lived or died, that that decision was completely out of my hands. And that the only way I was gonna escape this horrifying hollow of fear was if I could somehow just surrender myself completely into the hands of a LOVING GOD. -- The very same God of joy, of light, and of love that Kay Lynn’s life had me completely convinced she understood, accepted, and completely believed in. I made a very deliberate, a very conscious choice that night to simply BELIEVE, then to let go of the tension. And then, for the first time in a long, long time, I oh-so-peacefully slept…

That, however, was only “Part A” of my newfound leap of faith. “Part B,” would prove to be much tougher. I’d also made a commitment that, if I lived, I would make a real and honest effort to get to know this Loving Lord better. Because I really meant it, and because, then, I painstakingly began keeping my end of the bargain, slowly, my healing began.

I know that sounds sappy and simplistic, when actually the process for me was very rigorous, tedious, trying, bumbling, and complex. I took instructions in two churches; finally I became Catholic.

In it’s own way, that, too, proved to be yet another kind of homecoming. I can’t explain it, but there’s just this strong sense of "coming home" that I feel in the Catholic church that I don't feel in any other denomination. Yet the hardest part still remained. It had to do with me realizing, and then living the connected, daily kind of relational lifestyle the Lord was actually calling me to: My spirituality…

For, like many incoming Christians, beyond that first real glimpse of grace, I figured that God was much too busy -- and was way too important -- to deal with each of His children on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment type basis. And so I sought out some basic formula for spiritual well-being: -- If I kept the Commandments and faithfully attended Mass; if I tried hard to be a very good person; and if I made a few real sacrifices here and there, I thought… But no; the gnawing inside mecontinued.

In order for me to accept God’s invitation into real relationship, I first had to go back and address a lot of the mis-impressions I’d gathered of Him thus far along my life’s way. I had to let go of some of the very weird and distorted ideas I’d collected before I could really come to trust. While I am not totally ahead of this process, still, I have come so very far.

I also found that the accident that Dave and I had been in, especially when coupled with all that had happened to me before, left me with some post-traumatic stress. So I went to a local youth minister, for counseling. Not long after we began, he handed me a Bible and advised me to read from it daily. -- To start with the Book of John, then go back to Matthew, and read through the New Testament first before beginning the Old. Though his intent was to dissuade me from becoming a Catholic, I am sure, still, I took his advise and this has done me many favors.

For instance, at some point during first several months of reading, I stumbled upon a passage that took me right back to Kay Lynn's death, and to the unresolved wounds of my still-opened grief. This excerpt brought me wave-upon-wave of comfort; I cried and I cried as I read: [Wisdom 4: 7-15]

“The just, even if they die young, will be at rest.
…There was a person who pleased God and was
beloved by the Lord, and while living among sinners
was taken from the earth. This person was taken away
lest wickedness should alter their understanding,
or deceit beguile their soul. …For being made perfect
in a short time, this person fulfilled long years. Their
soul pleased God; therefore the Lord hastened to bring them
out from the midst of iniquities.
Yet the people saw this and did not understand,
…that the grace of God and God’s mercy are
with the saints, and that the Lord guards His elect.”

* * *

Understanding the faith of my friend today is not so difficult for me, for just as the Lord is our Shepherd, she was His sheep. She was a child, yet an innocent so very like the one Jesus held up when he said to us: “Unless you become again as one of these…”

One of the most beautiful sermons I’ve ever heard, in fact, has to do with the qualities of sheep and shepherds. The priest pointed out that sheep were created completely defenseless. That they simply cannot hurt others. They have no teeth with which to bite; no sharp claws to ward-off attackers. Also, they’re dumb -- truly among the least intelligent of all animals. A lost sheep would never depend upon it’s own reasoning, would never think to simply turn back… Without a kindly protective shepherd, sheep are doomed.

He also said that sheep were put here for only one purpose: For GIVING. They give of their wool over-and-over again; In times past, their blood that was sacrificed to atone for sin. Too, they give even of their flesh, their meat. Truly, sheep serve no other earthly purpose.

I’ve come to see my friend, then, as a pure and gentle little lamb of God who joyously scampered the hem of our invisible Shepherd; A Shepherd that, sadly, only she could see. Yet little did I know then that, simply by following close in her shadow, that slowly, surely I, too, was being knit directly to Him.

Age has taught me that, for me, all of this life's very best experiences feel very much like "coming home". Home is where people love you. Home is where you are appreciated and celebrated, warts and all. Home is where you fit, and find yourself embraced, all warm and snug. It’s the way my first family and my friend, Kay Lynn, made me feel when I was little. It’s the strength I've found within the Catholic Church. I felt it again in the restoration of my spirituality and in learning to walk daily with God. And in my marriage and family life now, too, once again I am at home.