Of course, the timing of these things is always the worst. Not that there is ever a good time to have your mother die, but it seemed like an especially bad week to have this happen. I had volunteered to accompany my daughter’s 1st grade class to the National Aquarium in Baltimore first thing the next morning and was scheduled for jury duty the following day. I just couldn’t bring myself to cancel on my little Chloe. She was so excited about me joining her on the trip and had been talking about it all week, so I went with her the following morning. Although everything seemed surreal, I did my best to put my loss away for the time being, so that I could savor the special day I had planned to have with my daughter. It occurred to me as I mingled with the other parent volunteers that I hadn’t put any time or effort into making friends with any of them. Although my husband and I had already lived in Maryland for four years, I didn’t have any real friends yet. I was acquainted with several of the other moms in our community but didn’t feel close enough to a single person in that room to tell them that my mother had died during the night. I had never felt so lonely in my life. It was clear to me in that moment that all my time had somehow managed to become dominated by my job and family. How had I allowed my life to morph into a world that was void of close friendships? It shouldn’t be so easy to do something so unnatural, not to mention unhealthy.
But to complicate my week further, my father was scheduled to have oral surgery that Tuesday and he was being quite difficult about it. In all fairness, he was likely in shock. He was acting a little crazy, in fact. At 79 years old, my dad had spent the last several months wearing temporary dentures while his “teeth,” that were about to be drilled into his gums, were being built. But he complained that the dentures were painful, so he refused to wear them, forcing him to rely on nutrition drinks for his meals. Perhaps this helped explain his impatience. The last thing he needed that week was to have my mother die. Still, he refused to reschedule the surgery no matter how much I begged.
“Dad, mom just died,” I told him over the phone Monday night. “There is nobody to be there with you during the surgery. And even if you do go through with it, who’s going to bring you back home afterwards?”
“I don’t need anybody to be here with me. I can drive myself.”
“God, I wish I would have gotten Missy’s phone number when I saw her up there last summer. Do you remember Missy Worthington?”
“Who?”
“My friend Missy from high school? We saw her last summer at the festival when I came home to visit you. Do you remember?”
“Ah, yes.”
“But I didn’t get her number when we spoke. Don’t you have any friends that you can call to be there with you during the surgery?”
“No. Everybody leaves for the winter. Nobody is here right now.”
“Well, the earliest I can get there is Tuesday night. Can’t you reschedule the surgery for later in the week?”
“Darian, I cannot reschedule this. If I cancel, it is going to be another three months of waiting. I’ll figure something out. You shouldn’t even plan to come home right now. There is a lot of snow. The weather is going to be bad this week. Just wait until spring. That is what I told your sister.”
“She’s not coming home?” I asked feeling somewhat surprised, but not entirely. Parisa hated Potsdam and rarely returned once she was old enough to leave. Still, I had hoped that our mother dying would be reason enough for her to come back and be with us.
“No. She’ll come for the memorial, but I don’t want to have that until spring, and we should do that at your house. We’ll talk about it when you get here.”
“All right. Well, I’m definitely coming so… I guess I’ll see you Tuesday night after your surgery. Good luck getting home afterwards. I mean, I really don’t know what else to say here, Dad. I hope you don’t die, because I really can’t handle that right now, okay?”
“I’m not going to die. I will see you tomorrow night. Have a safe trip.”
“I love you, Papa.”
“I love you very, very much,” he replied.
If I had to pick my two, favorite words that my dad says, they would be “very” and “cookie.” Being Iranian, he’s got that vampire accent thing going on. So “very” sounds more like “vedy.” “I love you vedy, vedy much.” He says it to me all the time. And he’s always been completely obsessed with cookies. There isn’t a type of cookie he doesn’t love. Perhaps it’s because cookies travel well and my dad loves a good road trip, so they’re practical. Also, he pronounces the “oo” in cookies more like a “u” sound, as in “rude.” Say “cookies” with a “u” sound. “Cukies.” Cute, right? My father essentially sounds like multiple characters on “Sesame Street” (The Count, Cookie Monster), but he looks like a terrorist, so it’s super confusing for most people.
I can’t tell you how many times my father has been stopped in a shopping mall and questioned by security, too many times to count. As if being a Middle Eastern male in upstate very white New York isn’t enough, my dad always walks around with a handheld recorder up to his mouth; making him look even more suspicious. In reality, he is just composing music. Still, security always stops him and asks what he is holding and then forces him to play what he is recording. By the time the allegations were launched against my father, I was so used to it that it barely phased me anymore. One time while shopping with my parents at the St. Lawrence Centre, a shopping mall in Massena, NY, I walked out of a store to find my mom panicked and pacing up and down the hall.
“Where the hell have you been?” My mom asked me.
“What’s wrong?”
“Security took your father! They were questioning him one minute and then the next minute they made him go down to their office!”
“What? You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said while laughing.
“This isn’t funny! This is very serious!”
“If you’re so worried why didn’t you just go with him?”
“I didn’t know where the hell you were! You need to go find him and make sure they aren’t doing anything to him!”
“Mom, they’re shopping mall security officers. What do you think they’re doing to him? Forcing him to buy more stylish pants?”
My mother raised her voice, trying harder to make her point. “This isn’t funny! You don’t know what kind of hatred there is out there. You have no idea what these idiots are capable of! I can’t handle this right now!”
My mom began shaking her head back and forth as tears rolled down her cheeks, then added, “Just go find him and do your thing. I’m staying right here.” My mom walked over to the nearest bench and sat down staring off into space. She continued shaking her head, as if her physical display of denial would allow her to escape what was happening. “Your thing” was code between my mom and I, and it typically involved me smoothing things over with uneducated, ignorant white people. But this time it seemed different, more dramatic than in the past. My mom actually looked scared for my dad. My heart sped up as I located the security office acting as white, normal, Christian, and heterosexual as possible.
“Dad? There you are!” I said, as I calmly walked into the small, square room.
“Ahhhh, hello! This is my daughter,” my father added with relief.
“Hi, I’m Dee. It’s nice to meet you,” I said to the three officers, offering my hand for formal handshakes.
I tend to call myself “Dee” in two situations. Either when I’m in a rush and grabbing a cup of coffee at Starbucks or when I’m talking to what I assume to be a stupid, racist person or group of people. Now was clearly one of those times. The name “Dee” is quick, gets the job done, and immediately shuts down the “you are so exotic looking, what’s your ethnic background?” conversation.
The three male security officers looked me up and down in awe and then back at my father, their mouths slightly ajar. They were all standing and surrounding my father as he sat in a chair looking up at them. I had never seen my father look so small, powerless, and out of his element before. It made me want to cry.
“Is this guy talkin’ your ears off yet?” I asked the men with a slightly flirtatious laugh, as I placed my hand on my father’s shoulder. “Whadya doin’ back here, Dad?”
I allowed the small-town drawl I knew the men would relate to roll off my tongue like a familiar song.
“Oh, we were just talkin’ about classical music,” one officer offered. “Your dad,” he said as if still struggling to believe this man and I were related, “was just tellin’ us that he writes music.”
“Yes, composing music is his favorite hobby,” I replied shaking my head and smiling down at my dad. “He’s actually a doctor by profession. We live in Potsdam.”
“You don’t say, you’re a doctor too, huh?” the officer responded, looking at my dad. “Yeah, of course, I know Potsdam. I grew up there,” he added, looking over at me. But just as the tension in the room began to disperse, my father began to talk again.
“Would you like to hear my music?” my dad asked the three officers.
I felt my face begin to give way to my discomfort as his accent cut through the room like a sharp blade. I turned and faced my father, giving him a private, WTF facial expression, but it was too late. My dad fumbled with his recorder as his hands slightly trembled. He pressed “play.” There was no sound. “Ah, wait. I need to rewind it first,” he added. My father proceeded to rewind the tape, as the three officers and I stood together smiling awkwardly at each other. “Here we go,” my dad added, his voice higher pitched than usual.
A series of long, dull sounding “draa da da de” notes, hardly distinguishable from each other, filled the room as the security officers stood there looking at us, not quite knowing how to respond. I imagined the months of drunken impersonations of my dad that would likely ensue following this musical offering. My dad hit the “stop” button on his recorder. Then there was silence, dead…awful…silence. The security officers and I looked at each other. I raised my eyebrows at them; flashing a tight lipped smile as a way to punctuate the end of our time together.
“Well. It was so nice to meet all of you,” I said, looking over to my dad to signal him to stand up. But my father stayed seated.
“Is it all right if we leave now?” my dad asked the security officers.
“Oh yeah! It was a pleasure talking to you, Sir. You two enjoy your evening now.”
My father finally stood up. We walked out of the “interrogation room” as I slipped my arm into his. When we were far enough away, I asked him, “What am I going to do with you, Dad? Why do you insist on bringing that stupid recorder with you into the mall?”
“Malls are vedy inspiring,” he replied.
“Did you have to play your music for them? I was handling everything just fine.”
“Yes you were, but I wanted them to know that they were interrogating me for nothing. I wanted them to feel stupid for thinking I was dangerous.”
“Did you achieve that?” I asked, much like a parent asking their child if they believe in Santa Claus.
“Yes. I achieved it. Don’t you think I achieved it?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I lied. “Why were you so afraid of them then? You were behaving so subservient. They’re fucking mall security officers in the smallest, lamest mall in America. You should have just told them to fuck off.”
“Darian, you did not see how they were behaving before you got there. I was really scared. They told me to sit down and to not move. They were standing over me like I am a criminal. Once they saw you, they changed their tune. ‘Ah, his daughter is white and attractive. We don’t want to make ourselves look bad in front of her.’ But I am not you. I always need to be aware of these types of people who have even the smallest amount of authority. For these kinds of jobs: security, police officers, they hire ignorant people on purpose who love violence. So they create something that isn’t there as an excuse to become violent. They are dangerous. I am not the dangerous one.”
I tried to let my father’s perspective sink in. I still couldn’t shake the disturbing image of him nervously sitting there looking up at the security officers from my mind. It was such as stark contrast from the image of poise, confidence, and intelligence I had grown up knowing.
“Were you paying attention to the song I wrote when I played it for the officers?” my dad asked, his mouth shifting into a proud smile. “It is beautiful. I can’t wait to get home and begin working on it.”
“I’m sure it is,” I responded. “I can never really tell what your music is going to sound like until you transfer it over to the piano. But once you do it’s always really good.”
I looked at him as we walked side by side, and it occurred to me that I would do absolutely anything for him.
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you too, vedy, vedy much.”
So that’s my dad, incredibly harmless and adorable. That man has never once raised his voice at me in my entire life. In fact, he’s one of the most gentle people I’ve ever known.
Ironically, it was my white Italian mother who was not always so gentle. She had a ritual on Sunday afternoons, while I was growing up, where she’d walk around our house with a fly swatter singing opera. Opera is in Italian, of course, which happened to be her native language. My mother had a beautiful voice, so the ritual was partially enjoyable for others. She’d sing for hours on Sundays, our family day home, and whenever she came across a fly she would scream “die” or “bastard” while swatting the fly to its untimely death. My father would stop her from time to time asking, “Why must you be so aggressive when killing the fly? The fly is not trying to hurt you. He is just trying to survive and live and be a fly.”
“Oh, shut the hell up! What the hell do you know?” my mom would retort and then, after waiting a few beats to allow the insult to be felt, she’d begin singing opera again while searching for more insects to kill. My father would raise his eyebrows in confusion and look at my sister and me, throwing his hands up in the air and shaking his head. He just couldn’t understand or embrace violence of any kind, even against houseflies.
The evening prior to my trip back home, following my mother’s death, I decided to call my closest long-time friend, Debbie Townson. I still hadn’t shared my mother’s death with anyone. Debbie and I had been inseparable our junior and senior years of high school. She was now living about four hours away from me in New Jersey and although we didn’t talk as often as we once did in our youth, she was my go-to person for all the big stuff. I swear the only thing that keeps us from being actual sisters is blood. I told her my mom had died and that I would be taking the train to Syracuse and then catching a bus from there to Potsdam the following day.
Although Debbie and I had known of each other growing up, it wasn’t until our junior year in high school that we became best friends. We ran in different circles, Debbie with the popular cheerleading crowd, me with the two other diehard Michael Jackson fans at our school. Yes, I was that girl, the one who occasionally showed up to school wearing one white glove and a red, plastic “Beat It” jacket. I never imagined someone as popular as Debbie would ever be nice to me, but then to my utter surprise, it happened one day.
On a blistering cold February morning our junior year, I stood outside my locked high school while sleet froze my eyelashes shut. By the time I realized school had been delayed, my father had already driven off. I stood there alone for about 10 minutes wondering if I would have to walk into town and find a business open at 7:30am, so that I could call home to let my parents know that I was stranded. The problem is, I’ve always been really skinny and by this point my limbs had already started to freeze, so I resolved to just kind of die there on the school steps instead. I imagined what a picture of me dead and frozen would look like in the yearbook. Then, just as I was almost about to die, a car pulled up and a window rolled down.
“Darian? Did your parents drive off and leave you here?”
I peeled my frozen eyelids open and was surprised to see Debbie Townson talking to me with a big smile on her face. I wondered if she was going to just laugh at me and drive off, but her mom was the one driving so I couldn’t imagine that an adult would be able to get away with being that cruel. “Is Debbie really being nice to me?” I wondered to myself.
“Get outta that cold and get into this car you silly girl!” her mom yelled out.
I was completely shocked. Debbie Townson was going to save my tiny, little, measly life. No wonder she was so popular. It occurred to me in that moment that she could very well be an angel in disguise. I walked over to her mom’s car, opened the door and got in. We drove back to their house and waited there together until school opened two hours later. Debbie and I immediately became best friends. The rest is history. Thirty years later, she’d save me from being stranded again on a cold, February day, her car waiting outside the train station in a snowstorm for me. Full…fucking…circle. Except this time, Debbie would drive me home to Potsdam so that I could be with my father after my mother died.
When we had spoken on the phone Monday night, Debbie assured me that she’d be waiting at the Syracuse train station to pick me up and drive me the three hours to Potsdam. I tried to talk her out of it, but trying to talk her out of picking me up was like my father trying to talk me out of coming to Potsdam. There was no use, so I didn’t bother continuing to argue with her. And thank God I didn’t. Getting to Potsdam would have been a nightmare without her. The train was delayed by over three hours. Had Debbie not been there, I would have missed the one and only bus that travels each day from Syracuse to Potsdam. I suppose I could have rented a car, but I was in no shape to drive and could barely keep my focus as it was.
All things considered the train ride home was pretty amazing. Actually, it was incredible, magical even. My entire perspective on life and death would begin to change over the course of that ride in ways that I could have never anticipated. I’ve always loved trains. They’re like vibrating bouncy chairs for adults – so soothing. Trains also have a way of allowing you to completely lose track of time and space. Looking back on the experience, I am still in awe of the chain of events that was about to unfold.
It didn’t take long for me to feel the sense of calm that always washes over me while riding on a train. I had been so tense earlier that morning, having never been away from my children for any extended period of time. I planned to stay in Potsdam for at least a week, two weeks at the most. Still, I was apprehensive at best. However, the sound of the train moving along the tracks quickly put me at ease. And after a few hours, I finally felt myself beginning to fall asleep. Just as I drifted off, a loud squeaking noise rattled me back awake. Then I heard a passenger behind me say, “Shit! This is ridiculous,” loud enough for the few rows of seats surrounding him to hear. I opened my eyes. The train had been making several, smaller, unplanned stops for no apparent reason. But by the sound of the breaks squeaking to a halt this time, I could tell this stop was going to take a while. I don’t travel enough by train to know if this is a common practice, but I can say that this passenger, in particular, was very annoyed by it. He would later yell at the train conductor, demanding a refund.
I stretched my arms over my head and turned towards the window. It was too bright outside to see, so I focused on the bottom part of the window where the glass meets the rubber encasement. I placed my head against the window and allowed the cool glass to soothe my forehead. When I opened my eyes and looked outside, a very white winter was staring back at me. Maryland had been green earlier that morning, so I knew I was getting closer to Syracuse and farther away from my children. I already missed them. My eyes adjusted to the light and wandered, beginning to take in a larger view. That’s when I noticed that the train had stopped over a body of frozen water. I looked out ahead of me and saw a view eerily reminiscent of the opening ceremony during the Olympics that I had discussed with my mother over the phone, just before she died. Ice formations were breaking apart and moving away from the train, which was now resting suspended over the frozen water. My heart stopped. “Fucking weird,” I thought to myself. We remained hovering over that spot for at least 30 minutes if not more. Then the train began to slowly depart and move further away from the familiar scene that my mother and I had both loved so much two days earlier. There was a moment when I could feel my mother out there, on the ice. I put my hand on the window and followed the scene for as long as it was in my field of vision. It felt as if I was leaving her there, the train now pulling me farther and farther away from her. I felt my grief beginning to move up through me and I thought, “Not on a train. I’m not going to start howling on a goddamn train.” I tried to talk myself out of the strange sensation I was experiencing. “My mother is not here. She’s dead. Ice forms on frozen water. That was just a coincidence. It’s winter, of course the water is going to be frozen outside. Stop being a weirdo!” But the sensation was too strong to resist. And now I could feel my mother sitting in the empty seat next to me on the train. “Is this when people go mad?” I wondered. “When their mothers die?”
I pulled my cell phone out to distract me. It was 9:30am and my dad had likely just gone into surgery. My mood quickly turned to panic, which seemed like a slight relief in that moment. I would take panic over crazy any day. Then the relief began to turn to resentment and anger. Why did my dad have to put me through this additional anguish right now? But then I remembered, “The poor guy has no teeth, Darian, this is not about you.” Then the anger turned inwards. How is it that I don’t have a single, fucking phone number to anyone in Potsdam other than my dad’s? What kind of daughter am I? This day was bound to come. Why wasn’t I more prepared? Why hadn’t I asked Missy for her phone number last summer when I had bumped into her at the Potsdam Festival? I had never experienced so many different emotions in such quick succession.
Missy would’ve been the perfect person to care for my dad while I traveled home. Her kids were older and she wasn’t working outside of her home at the time. Had I only asked for her phone number when she had asked for mine. Why am I always so fucking elusive with people?
The Potsdam Festival happens each July. It’s my favorite time of year to go home. There are crafts by local artists, an antique car show, sidewalk sales and lots of live music. It’s three days a year where the sleepy college town comes to life. Missy had seen me walking down the street during the festival seven months earlier and had called out my name. It was a wonderful and heart felt reunion. We hadn’t seen each other in over 20 years.
I first met Missy during a local ballet class while attending middle school. With Potsdam being so small, there were limited opportunities for children who wanted to dance. But Missy came from an even smaller neighboring town, Norwood, where there were even fewer opportunities. The two of us would spend our middle through high school years dancing together several days a week. Our experiences in that dance troupe would open both our worlds beyond our tiny towns and give us the chance to compete and perform with other schools in the North Country. There was even the occasional overnight stay if the performance was too far away from home. Missy was smart and beautiful. Academics came easily to her and she was full of talent. Some of the girls at my school would give me dirty looks whenever I brought her to our school functions, especially to our school dances. The last thing the girls at my school wanted was competition from another town. But I brushed off the dirty looks, feeling lucky to have finally found a friend that was as interested in the arts as I was. We stuck together and took care of each other when we were on the road performing.
I recall one overnight stay, in particular, where Missy was quite sick, so I prescribed her some antibiotics that I happened to have in my overnight bag. Being the daughter of a physician, it was quite typical for me to have in my possession an arsenal of medication, which always included a bottle of antibiotics. For me, carrying around antibiotics was like carrying around a pen. Our house had cabinets full of them. So, without my father’s knowledge or permission I would, from time to time, prescribe my friends antibiotics and make sure to give them enough to get them through the week. You see, unbeknownst to my father, I had promoted myself to his physician’s assistant and if a friend was a patient of my dad’s, and not feeling well, I figured why not just save them the trip to his office? “Here, take two of these a day but make sure to finish off the bottle or you could get worse,” I’d say, rattling off the medical sound bites that I had been hearing my entire life. But Missy wasn’t my dad’s patient, which is why I remember giving her the antibiotics so vividly. It was the first time I had crossed that line. I had somehow decided that it was okay to give out prescription medication to friends as long as they were patients of my father’s. In my mind, it didn’t become illegal until the moment when I handed over the antibiotics to Missy. But I loved her and I loved performing with her. I just couldn’t have her sick for our show. The following weekend is when I owned up to my poor judgment and explained to my parents that I had given someone antibiotics who wasn’t one of dad’s patients.
“Darian, are you saying you have been giving antibiotics to other people as well? Not just Missy?” my dad asked.
“Yeah. It’s not that big of a deal if they’re your patients, right?”
I’ll never forget the look on my parents’ faces. They were furious, and although 20 years is a long time to not talk to someone you once loved so dearly, time became immediately irrelevant as soon as Missy and I saw each other and began talking at the festival. She asked for my phone number before parting, but I had never asked for hers in return and we hadn’t spoken since that chance meeting. That trip home was the last time I saw my mother alive.
I felt completely trapped in that moment as I sat there on the train. My father was alone, grieving, and having holes drilled into his gums, and I wasn’t there to help him. And the vague possibility that I might be suddenly losing my mind seemed increasingly palpable as my mother’s presence continued to persist next to me on the train. At the risk of anyone hearing me, I sarcastically whispered under my breath, “If you are here with me right now Mom, a little help would sure be nice!”
The moment I completed that sentence, my cell phone rang. The area code read “315” which meant it was coming from Potsdam. “Oh my God it’s the dentist office,” I thought as I quickly answered the call, fearing something had gone wrong. My father had undergone open-heart surgery two years prior and I was terrified he wasn’t going to be able to handle the stress of the procedure.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Darian?”
“Yes it is. Who is this?”
“This is Melissa Fenton. I hope it’s okay that I’m calling you right now. Darian, I am so sorry about your mother. I just had to call you to see if there was anything I could do to help with your dad. I know he’s having surgery today and you’re still trying to get up here. I actually happen to be at the dentist’s office right now.”
It took a moment for her voice to register. She was still Missy Worthington (her maiden name) in my mind and dead people don’t respond to your requests for God’s sakes!!! Although I thought the prior two days had been surreal, it was clear to me now that I hadn’t even scratched the surface of surreal until this moment.
What I didn’t know at the time, was that on the evening before my train-ride home, as I tried to convince my dad over the phone not to go through with the surgery, that Missy had been craving something sweet to eat. She had popped three Jordan almonds into her mouth and ended up cracking her molar on the third nut. She called her dentist that evening and they squeezed her in for an emergency procedure the following morning. As she was sitting in the waiting room, the administrative assistants sitting at the front desk began talking about my father. Although the assistants never shared my dad’s name, one of them mentioned to the others that he had once owned a medical practice in the church down the street and that he had two daughters. She added that one of the daughters was on her way but couldn’t get there in time for the surgery. When they noticed Missy listening in on the conversation, they slid the window above their desk shut. As Missy recounted her story to me months later, she wasn’t sure why she couldn’t wait until after her procedure to contact me, not even aware that my dad had actually just gone into surgery moments before she had arrived. Missy went on to explain that as soon as that window slid shut, that she had this overwhelming sense that she needed to call me at that very moment.
The incredible timing of this interaction is something I would continue to turn over in my mind repeatedly over the next several months. As similar “coincidences” would continue to mount, this would be the one that would stump me the most. And it would be the one I would use against my father’s rebuttals as he continued to argue that these were all coincidences like any other. “But she wasn’t even scheduled to be there that day, Dad. She cracked her tooth, probably while you and I were talking about her on Monday night! And she ends up sitting there in the waiting room while you’re in surgery? It’s insane! This whole thing is crazy. It’s gotta be more than just a coincidence. And it was. But this “coincidence” would remain the most special in my heart, because it was the first time in my entire life that it occurred to me that there could possibly be something beyond this world, beyond this reality we call life. It was as if I was waking up from a deep slumber. As I sat there on the train trying to wrap my head around it all, I felt my world beginning to expand, much like how Missy and my world began to expand when we joined our dance troop. Much like my world expanded the first time I set foot in Times Square in NYC. It’s a beautiful thing, realizing how small our lives really are.
My train finally arrived in Syracuse several hours later, three hours past the scheduled arrival time. As I descended off the platform, I overheard that same passenger from earlier in the trip yelling once again at the train conductor about the preciousness of time, and how his had been sorely wasted. It struck me how different our two experiences had been on that same ride.
Snow fell around me as I bundled up, throwing my luggage over my shoulder. As promised, Debbie sat in her car waiting for me by the curb outside the station. As soon as she saw me walking towards her, she got out of her car to embrace me. We held each other and cried for as long as the cold would allow. But for me, the tears weren’t just about the sadness that comes with loss. It was suddenly more complicated than that, and so much more beautiful. My life and heart had opened. I was full of love and gratitude and blessed with true friendship. Time had become completely irrelevant once again and I was returning home.