Remembering Heather

apologies (for stealing) and credit to Heather's friends for these photos

12 weeks ago, my friend Heather took her life. I've written that stark sentence at least 10 times, the first part of the sentence reading "almost two weeks ago", "two weeks ago" etc finally arriving here. I hope to not get any further up the chain but life has intervened several times already and I still struggle with what to write. I would love to be able to impart some wisdom about how to deal with these things but I doubt I have anything new to say. I have been fortunate in my life not to have had to deal with memorials more than a handful of times. And even those were when I was very young, and concerned someone that was far removed from my life, or someone that didn't really want a memorial service (my family is apparently not the memorializing type). It stands to reason that this streak would not last.

I hadn't spoken to Heather in a few years, but we still exchanged Christmas cards. I met her through my friends Vicki and Whitney, who had each known her since college, before they got married. I've known Vicki since the sixth grade and even that much exposure didn't stop her and her then fiancé from inviting me to live in their apartment in San Francisco more than a decade later. As an unavoidable byproduct of our roomie status, they also introduced me to their close-knit cast of friends, who accepted me as a regular, or at least as special guest star with a traveling disco ball. I would see Heather whenever they all gathered at one of Vicki and Whitney's Pickberry vineyard parties, an American Cancer Society Gala, a La Barca birthday party, or on a smaller scale at a random bar celebrating our growing distance from 30. A decade ago, those gatherings were relatively often–when everyone lived in San Francisco–but it tapered off over time as families and distance made it more difficult.

Back then, I saw Heather outside of the larger group a handful of times when we grabbed lunch or bumped into each other through other mutual friends. I may (or may not) have kissed her during a fuzzy New Year's Eve when we were between others of significance but, honestly, that didn't put her in any sort of exclusive club. We made plans to meet up once when I was in San Diego and heard that she and her daughter had moved down there but those plans never came together. When calmly and rationally discussing baby names with Jenn (I may be rewriting history here) I suggested "Grace" and thought of Heather because her daughter is one of the only Grace's I knew of, but I considered that a vote for the name, not against.

My point is that we weren't close enough to share secrets, but we would have crossed a busy street to say hi to each other. I see or talk to Vicki, Whitney and Marilyn (another one of Heather's very close friends) fairly often so I knew about her impending divorce but I hadn't heard of anything of note beyond that, so getting 'that' phone call 12 weeks ago was a sudden, unexpected punch in the stomach for me.

Dealing with suicide, as I would quickly learn, is inherently different than dealing with other kinds of death. There is a conflict between extreme sadness for the person you lost and extreme anger at the person that took took them from you. Trying to resolve that these are the same person, makes the task as impossible as applying a rational thought process to a situation where, by definition, it doesn't apply. Losing someone this way robs you of most of the answers as well as a clear understanding of what the right questions are. Once you realize the futility of "why," you are left with remembering your friend and picking up the pieces.

Over the course of the next week, I did what I imagine most people do in dealing with this kind of thing. I cried some, I thought about Heather a lot, commiserated and looked for something to do to to distract myself and feel useful. Thankfully, Marilyn's "thing to do" is organize and she gave me some very welcome opportunities to help out a little. I found a place to quickly put together a memorial website that let people contribute pictures and stories (sympathytree.com should you ever need it). I carried the kleenex. I acted as the memorial "date" to anyone that needed it. I employed my best emotional defense mechanism (a misplaced sense of humor) to bring a few laughs to a place where they are welcome but don't come easy.

Marilyn told me later that she and Heather had lamented once or twice that the only times that all of the people you love get together are at your wedding and at your funeral. Sadly, you only get to go to one of those.

Heather had enough loved ones to literally fill two churches, which I found out by attending both memorial services. I made up for some of my previously mentioned lack of memorial service experience with the one-two punch of a service in Northern California on Thursday, quickly followed by a San Diego service on Sunday. That's two more than I would ever hope to attend, one more than I might have expected but just the right number to show me what a memorial can (and should) be by the contrast.

In retrospect, the best thing about the service in Northern California (Alamo) was that it dealt the initial "I can't believe I'm sitting in my friend's memorial service" blow. Every step in the process thus far had involved talking to friends on the phone or something that could have passed for a gathering of old friends getting ready for a baptism or a graduation. Sitting in that church pew, looking at a photo of Heather propped up on the altar, there was no denying what was going on. She was not going to walk in the door wearing a pink boa and a big smile. She was gone and she was not coming back.

The pastor spoke in vague terms about Heather's life, the sad truths about losing someone you love and bizarrely, another pastor spoke about someone else dying in the Hudson River and their family being glad that God was probably heartbroken (I think I missed the point) and then there was the letter from Heather's father. As a newly anointed father, the last part in particular struck me, forcing me to imagine having to write a letter that is, well, unimaginable. Other than the picture on the altar, it was the only part of the service that even suggested who Heather really was, the sum of herself and everyone that loved her. Ultimately it seemed like the Northern California service and the surrounding activities were mostly about what was wrong and sad in Heather's life, about the children and family that she left behind, about questions and answers that would never be answered or even asked.

The San Diego service was a different animal all together. It was both an infinitely happier celebration of the healthy vibrant person we all knew and a much much sadder experience that signified the end of something important.

Because it was on a weekend, many more people from all over the country had a chance to attend. I had forgotten how much I missed this circle of friends until one by one they appeared and I spent time catching up, showing baby pictures and remembering some key shared life highlights. It probably shouldn't have surprised me how much I enjoyed meeting other friends of Heather's that even if I had been given 50 more years, I might never have met. They all told happy and sad stories that felt like real memories. The San Diego people represented the breadth and depth of the friendships that Heather had forged over the years.



Just as the people are a key ingredient that make our lives complete, it was the speakers that really made the difference in services. For whatever reason, no one besides the pastors spoke at the first service and the result was something that looked and acted like a memorial but ultimately felt hollow and had little to do with Heather. So much more needed to be said to build a proper picture. Fortunately, Heather was an avid and skilled collector of people from the opening scenes of her childhood friendships to the final chapter of her story and this gave us all one last chance to know her better. I think even the people who knew her best, came out of the San Diego memorial knowing a little bit more about their beloved friend. I am in awe of the people that spoke in San Diego, each roughly representing a moment in the chronology of her life They are some of the strongest, most eloquent friends I can imagine a person having, their stories brought laughter and tears and did our friend proud.

A wise woman once wrote on her Facebook page (did I just write that?!), "I believe you should always go to the funeral". If I didn't know enough to believe that before, I certainly do now.