Dark Hair. Big Smile.
“Did you have a friend - dark hair, big smile — she died suddenly?”
I nodded, casually, like I was used to my dead friends contacting me through psychic mediums in the middle of busy trade shows focused on whole living, CBD oil, and crystals. Lots, and lots of crystals.
“She says she’s sorry,” the medium continued quickly. “That she had a lot going on in her life…” she seemed to trail off, as if Tricia herself couldn’t find the words to send through the woman sitting in front of me. She was holding my hands, eyes closed, listening to the invisible waves of communication coming from the other side. She starts laughing.
“Oh, I like her. She’s got great energy!” All I can do is nod, and smile in confirmation of Tricia’s infectious personality, and try not to completely lose it so I don’t waste any of the precious fifteen minutes that my friend and date to the Hippy Expo had lovingly signed me up for. I had managed not to have any expectations of what would happen. I made sure she didn’t know my name, that she couldn’t look up my Facebook profile in advance and see the references to my deceased dog, friend…and father. I told her no when she asked if I had any specific questions or people to contact. I definitely had not told her that I had committed to this session earlier in the week, before I learned that there was finally a memorial service for Tricia. And that in this exact moment, the people that loved Tricia the most were setting up for it, less than a mile away. I didn’t tell her that I decided to keep the session, even if it meant I would be late to the service, because it just seemed like too much of a coincidence with timing.
“I love her smile,” the medium says, and I imagine Tricia endlessly smiling, in the mountains somewhere. A moment’s bliss, followed by: “She says she’s heard you. She says she’s made peace with how she left. She says that now you need to make peace with it.” The words are like a stone slamming on my chest. How? How does one ever come to terms with the emotional fallout that comes with a friend’s suicide? When I loved her enough to frantically call and text in what we all correctly suspected were her last moments, but I couldn’t call or text regularly when she moved back several months earlier? Or how it’s hit home for me that this is what aging and life is. We just start collecting bodies, clinging to whatever is left of the people we took for granted, then forge ahead because that’s what we’re supposed to do.
“Is she happy?” I manage weakly through the tears and swirling thoughts. I’ll never get to mountain bike with her. She won’t teach my daughter how to ski or bike or ride a horse. I won’t sit with her again on those deliciously cushy stools at The Office and talk through life’s twists and turns while getting fuzzy on bourbon and truffle fries. Is it selfish of us to make people like her stay, through their pain, so that we get to have them in our orbit, popping up for joyous impromptu coffee shop meetups?
The medium smiles again. “Yes. Very. She’s making heart outlines, making a heart over her chest.” I’m smiling now, I can just see her making her hands into a heart. The medium pauses. “I see pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. I’m not sure if you’re in them, too. I just see pictures of Tricia. Everywhere.” I have no idea what she’s referring to, so I just hold onto every word, trying to see Tricia’s happy face too.
“Will you tell her I love her and miss her? And that I’m glad she’s happy?” I sit there waiting, already feeling like my first words ever communicated to the other side are generic and weak. But the medium smiles again, laughs even.
“Yes, she wants you to know she’s happy. Oh my goodness, I really love her spunk! She’s turned around, thumbs pointed over her shoulders, showing me something, like ‘check out these babies!’ (The medium is still laughing) Her wings. She’s showing me her wings. She is hilarious.”
It’s right about this time that my Granny, clearly tired of waiting, interrupts. Never one to beat around the bush, she gives me her love and continues her tradition of never, ever forgetting my upcoming birthday. I smile, and tell her I love her. And like that, the fifteen minutes is up.
I thank the medium, and pay her calmly. My brain is trying to rationalize everything that just happened. Trying to explain it. But I don’t want to explain it away. I don’t want to muse that maybe the local medium had read the numerous articles about Tricia’s sparkling personality and took a shot in the dark that I knew her. It feels weird that I’m politely shaking this woman’s hand. I should be sobbing, thanking her for this insane experience, and begging her for more. Instead I walk away, a little dazed, and quietly go on my way.
I get back on the river trail and head for Tricia’s memorial, trying to soak in every detail of what just happened. When I roll up, there are several clusters of people quietly chatting in and around the same gazebo where, almost a year earlier, we all stood silently holding candles in shock and disbelief. I find those that I know and mingle for a bit. Then I head into the gazebo. On a table, there are a couple of familiar photos framed in display; Tricia in the mountain wildflowers with a smile so warm and generous it’s impossible to fathom the pain she was in. I smell the candles. I take a souvenir print of Tricia on her horse. Then I look up. There are rows and rows of cord strung between the columns of the gazebo, filling almost all of the empty space looking out onto the park and the river. Clipped to the cord are pictures. Hundreds of pictures of Tricia’s dark hair, and big smile.
