February 14, 2019 was an incredible day.
I had just turned 50 years old on the fifth. I was in
Madrid, Spain on the trip of a lifetime. I'd spent the three days before
zooming on the bullet train to Barcelona where I saw La Sagrada Familia and
visited the Ciutat Vella and the Barri Gotic, viewed the aqueducts of Segovia
and the Alcazar, toured the University of Salamanca and the walls of Avila. I
spent the morning of the 14th touring the Prado and seeing the works of El
Greco, Velazquez, Goya, Picasso. That night we were going to a Valentine's Day
dinner at Al Mounia, a Moroccan restaurant. I'd had to remember my Spanish and
was finally starting to get comfortable with it again.
However, before we got out of the taxi back at our
apartment, a tiny Air BNB that overlooked the entrance to the Plaza del Sol,
Don asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I needed to go straight back to
the room. Once we got there, I went into the bedroom and I broke down into
tears, because my best friend had died.
I had awakened at about 3 a.m. that morning, Madrid time,
and just happened to check my phone, which I usually have turned off at night. I noticed a message from Lisa Henry who was also good friends with
Christine and she said Christine's brother Chadd was trying to get in touch with
me because Christine had become very ill and was in the hospital at Little
Rock. Things weren't looking too good.
This was a shock to me. She'd posted on her Facebook page
that she was battling the flu and wasn't happy about it at all. She'd also just
lost her cat Rusty, who'd been with her for several years. I didn't think things
had taken such a turn for the worse. If I remember right, Chadd sent me message
soon after saying she was on life support and I asked him to please keep me
posted. He knew I was on vacation, but he wanted me to know what was going on.
He didn't want the situation to ruin our trip.
About an hour later, he messaged and said she was gone. I
went numb and didn't know what to do. I didn't want to wake Don, so I just
drifted in and out of sleep, thinking maybe I'd dreamed it all.
I told Don as soon as we got up and I managed to hold myself
together during our lightning fast tour through the Prado. Luis, our guide from
the Tapas tour we took our first night in Madrid was gracious enough to lead us
through and was one of the coolest people we met there. There was a moment as I
was standing in front of an El Greco (I don't remember which painting) when I
almost didn't think I was going to get through it. But when that was over, and
Don and I were back in the room by ourselves, that's when I lost it.
Christine was my best friend through most of high
school. She moved to Mena when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore. Her
family also went to our church at First United Methodist in Mena. Here we are on the trip to Washington D.C. we went on with a student group in June of 1985, sitting in a mock space capsule. I was already practicing my "I'm going to be a rock star someday" look. She just looks tired. Probably of me. We put a picture of Nikki Sixx wearing nothing but a towel on the wall of our hotel room and thought we were being so..."rebellious."
We were pretty much
inseparable, listening to hair bands and watching MTV twenty-four seven, until
we had a slight falling out when I was a senior and she was a freshman at
Henderson. Stupid stuff, really, but things happen, and friends sometimes just
take different paths. She was the reason I went to Henderson; I'd been looking
at Arkansas Tech up until she'd started there. I saw her briefly right before
she graduated with her bachelor's degree - I still had two more years to
go.
Anyway, the years went by and social media was invented. We
found each other again on Facebook and kept up quite a bit. I even introduced her via the web to another friend of mine, Lynn Milam, in Killeen because they both loved Christian Kane and the show Supernatural. Christine and I had a short visit in person up at Mena when she and her mom were in town
visiting with the Rousseaus. And then she moved back to Mena to start a new
job there. Yay!! She went with me and my mom to see American Made, the movie
about Mena that isn't really about Mena at all, and we hung out up there
several times. She came to the big Riddle Family Christmas shindig in 2017 and
got to meet all the "Younglings" (my grandchildren) and some of the Groovetones (my bandmates). When she had to
look for a new job, I encouraged her to apply at my college where we had
several openings at the time. That didn't work out, but she did get her
daycare job in Arkadelphia so she was still close by. She came and celebrated
Thanksgiving with us in 2018. She brought a Marie Callender's apple pie. (She
didn't really like to cook or bake! Lynn was teaching her via the web.) We watched Solo, the beginning of The Last Jedi and she was introduced to all
my cats, because we always loved our kitties as much as we loved hard rock music and Star Wars. We both owned Siamese and orange
tabbies at various times and were always sharing pictures of Renegade Ted, Cherish, RC, Rusty,
Reno, and Felix. She came to my birthday dinner in Mena with my parents at Chicollo's. She gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card. I still haven't used it.
We made plans to do a lot of stuff together. I was making
plans to go see bands that I never saw back in the day and she was going to
come with me. But now she's gone, and I am heartbroken.
When I was able to pull myself back together that day in
Madrid, I used Don's phone to call Chadd to find out what really happened.
She'd had the flu, yes, but she had also developed pneumonia and was having
trouble breathing. Some other issues arose, and they did all they could do. The
family traveled from Alabama to Little Rock, and a pastor from Arkadelphia
was there, so she was surrounded by those who loved her there in the end.
Before all this she'd been anxious to see the pictures from the trip and had
enjoyed the ones I'd posted so far. I really wish she could have seen them all.
Don and I went on that night to have a fantastic dinner at
Al Mounia and were even entertained by a belly dancer. I found the djembe
player rather attractive myself - and I know Christine would have also😄.
We
bought a bottle of wine and raised a toast in her honor. I know she would have
enjoyed the atmosphere, if not the food. I don't know if Moroccan would have
been her style. That night Don posted that the sky in Madrid was a little less
blue that day. The next night, our last in Madrid, we stood outside the Royal
Palace at dusk and listened to the two brothers who were playing violin and
guitar on the parade deck. They played "Time to Say Goodbye," and it
was terribly bittersweet. It was time to say goodbye to Madrid, but it was also
time to say goodbye to my friend. To feel such elation and sorrow all at once;
to experience a dream vacation and such loss simultaneously.
I find it terribly ironic that Christine died on Valentine's
Day. She HATED Valentine's Day. The minute the stuff went up after Christmas
she'd start complaining. Christine never married and didn't have children, though she loved them greatly. She had
once been engaged but that fell through; I'm not really sure why and I didn't
ask. (I'd met the guy and didn't particularly like him, but it really wasn't
any of my business.) But she still despised the holiday. I always told her
anyone or anything could be your "valentine" - her family, her
friends, her cats. In typical Christine fashion, she kinda harrumphed me, that
kind of "easy for you to say!" thing. It just made me laugh.
"But I'm your valentine!" I'd say, and I'd get that eyeroll.
As memorial arrangements were being made, Chadd contacted me
about the service. Christine had been cremated, but they were gathering at his
home around Florence, Alabama and would be holding the service at the Methodist
church in Killen in March. Would I get up and speak? Absolutely.
I think it was the morning of the day we were going to
leave for Alabama, because I had dropped off Renegade Ted, the 15-year-old Siamese, at the vet to be boarded. Christine was a huge fan, and she named him that after he used to go on adventures
out in the woods at my rent house in DeQueen. I
was coming up Texas Boulevard and Mötley Crüe's "Home Sweet Home" came on
the radio. She and I were HUGE Crüe fans, much to the chagrin of our
parents, and it had me reaching into the glove box for some Starbucks napkins
to wipe my face. (She and I were also Starbucks fans.) I had to stop at CVS
for...something...and for some odd reason was compelled to buy this $1 plastic
expandable bracelet with blue beads and a rhinestone heart charm and it reminded me of her.
Don't really know why - I just bought it. I wear it to the
shows I wanted her to see with me. I wore it to see Whitesnake, KISS, Heart and
Joan Jett, Y & T, even the Gary Allan concert. (I don't think she
understood my acceptance of country music. But having had to learn to play it,
well, I developed a new appreciation for it. Traditional country, not that
Hick-Hop stuff. And Gary Allan is more crossover - I think she would have
enjoyed it. Especially the guitar player wearing the Ratt T-shirt. She was with
me there, whether she wanted to be or not!).
It was great to see my other family at that get-together at
Chadd's. I saw my other mom, Jean Ann, and Scott, and Chadd, and his beautiful
family. We shared stories of Christine - her loyalty, her humor, her
stubbornness, her health struggles, her no-nonsense approach to life. It wasn't
hard to come up with things to talk about at the service, but it was hard to
get up and really say it. I told the story of how we followed Robert Sweet,
drummer of Stryper, around Six Flags for about ten minutes but we were too
chicken to speak to him. That was the first metal band we were ever allowed to
go see.
Though my friend has moved on to another place, I gained
friends in the process. Her friends Carla and Mekey were there and introduced
themselves. I remember Christine telling me about Carla when Christine first
moved to Mena. She always said Carla and I were a lot alike. I saw George and
Marge Rousseau there. I met her nephew and nieces who loved their aunt dearly.
There were many others there who loved Christine and her family and were just
as in shock as the rest of us. I got through the speech, and tried to relay the
fun times, the good times, the times that were probably too good that most best
friends experience in their late teens, if you know what I mean.
Christine was the first person to ever read the first novel
I published. Out of a green Mead three-subject notebook with college-ruled
paper. When she finally got a Kindle, she downloaded "Rockin' Heaven Down" the minute it became available. She texted me when she finished it
and was the second person to review it on Amazon. When we were hanging out in
Mena in the spring of 2018, she told me: "You changed some stuff!"
And..."What exactly have you been DOING all these years??!!" I
reminded her, "It's totally FICTION!!" We went on and on about Paul
Hackman (Helix) and Tommy Lee and all the other rocker men we used to swoon
over back in those days, and I told her I was working on the sequel. And she
was ready to keep reading, because I'd been posting chapters in another blog
I'd started. I would send her new scenes I'd written, and she always had good
feedback. She was a big fan. She's even the inspiration for one of the
characters. That is why the ebook is free on Kindle this week: to honor her as
my first reader back when I started in 1985.
Well, I dropped the ball. I didn't have the first
installment ready last year. But the first thing that popped in my head as we
drove back to Arkansas after her service was "Finish your books." And
"Go to your concerts". And "Learn new things." And
"Take care of yourself." And "Do the things you enjoy with the
people you love as often as possible, because you just never know." So
that's what I'm doing, as much as I can. She would find it crazy that I'm
learning to ride a motorcycle, but she wouldn't be the least bit surprised.
For the past year, I've had those moments where I think,
"I need to tell Christine this," but I have to catch myself. I may
not be able to say it physically, but she probably knows what I want to tell
her already. I know she's somewhere talking to some of those rocker dudes that
have passed before, petting a multitude of our previous pets, and never having
to worry about Valentine's Day ever again. She's also most likely enjoying as
much Starbucks coffee she can drink and as many Cinnabon cinnamon rolls she can
eat. In fact, I picked one of those up at the Pilot in Arkadelphia today. It's
not on my diet, but I'm eating it.
I also may watch an episode of The
Librarians with Christian Kane, or an entire season of Supernatural. I'll read another book in the Lillian Jackson Braun "The Cat Who" series, because she loved those. I started them last year and I'm on number four, "The Cat Who Saw Red", which I found at the Friends of the Library Bookstore the last time I worked there. I've started collecting them, like I did the Sue Grafton Alphabet series.
I'll
definitely be petting my cats. I was happy to know that her cat Felix, who was a foster cat she eventually adopted, was able to find a good home. I will do all of these things, because they will always remind me of her.
Another Valentine's Day has come and gone, so rest well, my friend, until I see you again. In the
meantime, have fun hanging out with Paul and Robbin and Michael Jackson and Prince and Elvis and Carrie Fisher. I
know you’re hearing an awesome show every weekend!
