The body of Cheryl DeBoer was found in a
culvert quite a ways from where her car was parked. The search for her had gone on for five or
six days. As I walked to and from the
transit center her poster was on walls, people handed out little photos from
her, in the pouring rain a command center was set up in the library parking
lot. Friends and family had mobilized to
find her. She was found and she was
dead.
Nick dated a girl named “T” for a while. She was active in the theatre at the High
School. She was more “crew” than “cast”
and she was cool. A very nice girl. Our house was kind of the “hub” during Nick
and Michelle’s high school years and we enjoyed many an evening of teenagers
hanging out, watching TV, playing video games – doing teenagery stuff. “T” hung out, too, but not as much as the
others. Her family was into sports,
soccer mostly, and they often had games or practices to go to. We didn’t get to know her, or her family, very
well.
Something had happened. “T” had gone to school but she had not come
home. Her car was found a few blocks
from the school and her cell phone was used but when pressed, it was used by
some kids that found it. “T” was missing
and no one knew where.
Panic struck and everyone was looking for
her. Friends and family scattered
out. E-mails were searched, postings
were read, the story of her missing was published on-line. Miriam was called by a local news reporter
wanting information that Miriam couldn’t give her.
Police were, obviously, called. Day turned to night and she was still gone. Nick slept by his phone and answered all
questions asked of him. Miriam didn’t
sleep.
At this point I was stage managing a play in
Everett “Enchanted April” and I was already going to miss the final weekend of
the play to go to my father’s half-funeral in upstate New York.
“T’s” Mother was out-of-town in D.C. with her
younger sister and “T’s” father had other commitments dragging him away from
the home.
As 24 hours slowly turned into 48 hours, we
were asked to “hang out” at the house for any news. The hope was that wherever “T” was, she’d
return home and someone needed to be there.
Even though we were getting closer to opening
night of the play my brain couldn’t go really beyond where “T” was and what was
going to happen next. Would we be
putting up posters? Would she be on the
evening news? How long until the tide
turns from missing to potentially dead to actually dead? You don’t want to go there, you don’t even
want to be within a couple blocks of there but what if…?
As I was calling cues and hovering around my
“corner” of the stage, Miriam called me.
“T” had been found. Alive. She was in a small room in the house how and
when she got there, no one knew. When
discovered she had no idea who Nick, or her friends, were.
From what we pieced together, “T” was under
some major stress as her grades weren’t where they should be and she needed to
do quite a bit of work to overcome the bad grades. When she had gotten to the school or was done
(I can’t remember) she blacked out into something that might be referred to as
“Dissociative Amnesia.”
In layman terms: Her brain snapped. And, “poof,” four years were suddenly gone.
I rushed home to be with Nick and Miriam and,
though Nick and “T” went to their prom, it was obvious that their relationship
could not recover. A few weeks before
this all happened, Nick and “T” and Karin (Nick’s lovely wife) went down to a
place called Gasworks Park and Nick’s friend took photos of the three of them
goofing off.
You may be asking, and rightly so, how this
relates to Lent.
Well – in those hours where “T” was gone, I
realized later how everything returned to the basics. None of the “stuff” that takes up so much of
our mind space: Sports, Theatre, Writing,
TV Shows, Work, etc. meant nothing. And
part of Lent is realizing the importance of the real world and the real stuff
and what really, truly, matters:
Friends, Family and Faith. Enough
of the BS that fills our life and adds a layer (or ten) between what we think
is important and what is truly important.
When the potential of death is on the line life goes down the root
basics of survival.
When you spend 40 days wrestling with your own
mortality and, in a way, God – then maybe it’s time to get back to basics.
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