Bonnie’s cancer returned
with a vengeance exactly one decade after it nearly claimed her life in 1995.
As the months wore on, we both suspected that taming it a second time was
unlikely, and so Bonnie began the legal process of setting up a trust for her two
kids, her living will, and her estate executor paperwork, all of which I would
manage upon her death. We candidly discussed her impending fate, laughed about
all the crazy good times we’d had together, and spoke of her two kids, then 17
and 20.
She felt good about the
stability her son, Chris, seemed to have created in the past year: he was
dating a loving and grounded young woman, held a steady job at Boeing, and had
removed his lip piercing and added long-sleeved shirts to his professional
wardrobe to cover a plethora of tattoos. It was Christine on whom most of
Bonnie’s trepidation centered. School wasn’t her thing, she wasn’t sure what
she wanted to do with her life professionally, and Bonnie worried that her
death would be much more difficult for her daughter to weather.
At the end of a visit with
Bonnie in July of that year, I made her promise to hang in there until after I
returned from a long-scheduled two-month family sabbatical in France. Her mood
was lighthearted as she said, “Don’t worry; I’m not going anywhere yet.” Weeks
later, at the Denver airport, I made one last phone call to her before boarding
our flight to Paris. “Go!” she admonished. “I’ll be here when you get back. Promise.”
A month later I was lying on
a massage table in Provence while the therapist—whom I’d been told was also
somewhat psychic—worked on my body, which still suffered the residual effects
of a near-fatal illness five years prior. She spoke very little English and my
French was limited to the ability to order wine, ask where the restroom was,
and say please and thank you. Needless to say, conversation was minimal.
Lulled into a state of
complete relaxation, Colette broke the silence of my massage by saying,
“Louise is here.”
“Excusez-moi?”
“Louise. She is here.”
“Pardon? Je ne comprends pas."
“Louise. She is here, how
you say, ‘her spirit’—it is here. She bring to you love. You must bring to her
love aussi.”
“But I don’t know anyone
named Louise,” I said, wondering why my relaxing massage was being interrupted by
what felt like a woo-woo snipe hunt.
“I do not know why, but the
spirits, they use the number two name.”
“The what? The number
two…the middle name?”
“Oui oui. Yes, the middle
name. They use it to speak with me.”
“Huh,” I said. “I don’t know
anyone whose middle name is Louise.”
But the massage therapist
was adamant. “Louise is here. She bring to you love. So much love. You must give
her love.”
So what’s a girl to do? I
sent this seemingly imaginary Louise love and enjoyed the rest of my massage,
albeit with a little less relaxation.
I returned to our rental
home in Mazan, went about my day and waited until it was morning in California
so I could make my weekly call to Bonnie. It was only 7 am on the Pacific
Coast, but Bonnie had always been an early riser, so I wasn’t concerned about
waking her. Our mutual friend, Kelli, answered the phone, her voice weary.
“Bonnie passed away this
morning, Lauren,” she said. “Her mom checked on her about an hour ago and she
was already gone.” We spoke for a few more minutes before saying our good-byes.
An hour later, a thought
popped into my mind: Bonita L. Young.
How many times had I seen her formal name on the reams of legal documents I’d
signed months earlier? Always Bonita L. Young. Never Bonnie. And never more than
“L” for the middle name. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember if Bonnie had
ever actually told me what her middle name was. I immediately dialed her number
again, and this time, her mother, Iva, answered. I offered my condolences
before asking, “What was Bonnie’s middle name?”
“Louise,” Iva said. “Why?”
One of Bonnie's favorite words was "believe." You could find it lurking throughout her home, spelled out with large metal letters on the mantel or woven into a throw pillow on her favorite reading chair. For Bonnie's memorial service, I decided to add it to an enlarged photo of her, which I knew was one of her personal favorites. Believe! it shouted in both word and image.
If ever there was a situation that prompted me to believe, it was that moment lying on a French massage therapist's table as she told me Louise is here.
