“Suzette”

 
            Suzette’s easy smile and throaty laugh drew me to her side when I entered the room. Sitting next to her in German class changed my life forever. Our fourteen year old souls recognized a link that bound us together for more than fifty years. Our surreptitiously passed notes carried our idealistic passion for life woven together with Suzette’s worries about her parents’ divorce and my angst over fitting in at school. We spent school hours together snickering at our own follies over high school crushes. Once her parents divorced and her mother moved into the apartment complex in our neighborhood, our afternoons and evenings stretched together. We applied to Trinity University and were both accepted. My father’s job change and my family’s move to League City meant I shifted to Texas A&M, with its lower tuition and housing costs.
            That separation, one that could’ve undermined our friendship, brought us even closer. Thick volumes of endless letters wove us together with our dreams and doubts stuffed into envelopes taped together with our optimistic hope. I understood her perfectionism, her passion for languages and music—and life. When she came back from her first trip to France, thin from living off of cheese, bread, and language, we celebrated her tale of a local woman’s astonishment that she was an American—and a Texan at that!
            Life events swept us up and along: marriages for both of us, child for me, divorce for her. My roots sank into one home and career while her passions for music and languages swept her to California and Tennessee, and many places in Europe. Our letters became less frequent, but we shared all of the burdens of adulting as the years passed. When Suzette began her first struggles, though, she didn’t let me know.
            One day in 2019, Suzette called me with the news that she’d returned to Texas! Her new address, fifteen minutes away, thrilled me. Our reunion became bittersweet within minutes as she told me about her hardships back in Nashville. She recounted struggling to focus at work and eventually not being able to hold down jobs. Both her sister and her mother had helped her find a doctor in Texas that she hadn’t seen yet. By our next visit, her optimism gave me hope that new medications would start impacting her thought processes. Her life became a script on an oversized calendar where she notated minutiae to hold onto moments. Unable to get a driver’s license, I’d pick her up for shopping or lunch out when her mother wasn’t available. Her sister could only find a practical, stark apartment open within easy driving distance from her mother’s place. We softened it with wall hangings, rugs, and soft throws. Someone had furniture in storage, and her place gradually filled with her gentleness. When she couldn’t remember how to work her DVD player, we’d run over for an in-person review with my husband bringing his guitar for music and food. When she met someone through her mother, she moved into a nicer place that ended up flooded by frozen pipes during the Texas freeze. We talked often. Eventually, she moved into a cozy small RV nestled by the river. I met her boyfriend, fell in love with her small dog, and tried to hold onto Suzette with each visit.
            I worried when she didn’t answer her phone. I left tons of messages for her. Eventually, Suzette called to let me know that she was in Florida to be closer to her sister, and to have more help by moving into assisted living. Sometimes Suzette would call me and loop into conversations. I always picked my phone, no matter where I was or what I was doing. We’d chat about her dog that she missed. We talked about my family. We talked about her day, my day, and anything that grounded her to the present. For many weeks, my messages went unanswered, but I left them in case an aide or her sister checked them. During our last conversation in March, she knew me.
            I hold onto that.
          Suzette’s friendship made me a better person. She taught me kindness. Her passion for music helped me understand my own son’s healthy obsessions with music and art. Her openness and generosity guided me through many difficult times. I will gather strength from the girls we used to be and women we grew into to make it through this next life passage without her.

Backwoods Volunteers

Suzette in France

Suzette 2015

Suzette with me- 2019 in Gruene, TX

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman