Laura and Her Heart

Nearly 20 years ago, I met a young girl named Laura. She was beautiful, with golden blonde hair, blue eyes and a happy, cheerful disposition. I had organized a youth choir composed mostly of high school kids and some of their friends. We even held our own fireside concert which was quite a spiritual event. I don't know why but we struck up quite a friendship--she was 17 and I was already into my late 30s, old enough to be her mom. But still, she talked to me as though I were her friend and confidant and began to share with me her thoughts about life and her dreams for the future. Many times she would come by for advise but mostly I just listened to her and helped her organize her thoughts by asking her questions.

Many times, I would scold her about her driving. Her father sometimes let her drive his little sports car and she would brag to me about the many times she had driven way past the speed limit and never got caught. One evening, she stopped by the house and invited me for a drive in that little car to get herself a slurpee. She would criss cross through cars weaving in and out speedily as I screamed at her to slow down. She'd just laugh at me. I was so mad. But in the end, she managed to bring me back safely. I remember her shoulder length golden hair blowing in the wind and her big, wide smile...so carefree and so young. I was shocked that she had never been issued a speeding ticket. But she said that every time she got stopped, she would just smile at the officer and she would just get a warning. I don't know if I believe her but if she were so lucky, I knew that her luck would someday run dry.

Laura was a gifted artist. Her sketches were amazing. She was also very musical. She seemed to have everything--beauty, intelligence, talent and personality. I thought that if she could treat me as her peer and a friend that someday, when my daughters grow up, I can have the same relationship with them as I have with her. I was open to that possibility because of her.

I moved wards so I didn't see her for a while until she called me one afternoon to tell me that she had met a nice young man and was going to marry him. They came by so I could meet him. He seemed like a wonderful man and I asked her if she was happy. The answer would be obvious. She was glowing.

Several years later, while Laura, her husband and small children were attending sacrament meeting, she suddenly collapsed. She had something wrong with her heart that was undiagnosed. She had a heart attack. They managed to revive her but the lack of oxygen had done its damage. Laura would never be the same again. She has lived in a rehabilitation care facility now for many years. Her memory is like swiss cheese. She walks with a cane or a walker. She is unrecognizable. My poor Laura. And I would not see her again.

People come and go into our lives and our thoughts seldom bring them back to us. Today, for some reason, my memories of Laura suddenly came vividly and acutely. I think of her--that suddenly she can no longer make beautiful pictures, or remember the songs I taught her or the conversations we've had. And I picture her having a difficult time walking and that thought is simply incongruent with the picture I have of her on the driver's seat with her head thrown back in laughter as she dares to weave in and out of the cars in front of us. That in an unexpected moment, her heart would betray all the wonderful things that she was and the extraordinary things she could do.

I miss Laura. I know she is progressing but it's glacier-like and with despair I do realize that she will never in this life default to what she once was. It is still difficult for me to fathom the all too common story of a young person who has everything and then loses it all in a blink of an eye--without warning and seemingly without any viable reason other than the incomprehensible ones of a god who we believe loves us. And so we hang on to those reasons built from faith--that the tragedy is really not one because somehow it will bless our lives perhaps with patience, understanding, endurance, humility. We need those explanations and justifications to appease the unanswerable questions that torture us. And then we find explanations, goodness, and magnify the plausible outcomes and seemingly meaningful and positive clues for its occurrence--the benevolence in the tragedy. It is a requirement to be able to do so just as much as we try to suck in air as we drown. Such is the human heart when faced with events that have no obvious explanation.

Earthly life is indeed short but significant in its scope. We will be judged by our deeds while we live in this estate. So it becomes a magnificent obsession for me to find understanding and meaning in the events that I see and experience. I am obsessed with finding order in chaos and substance in the enigma and paradox of life's events. And I've seen too much already.

My aunt's husband, who is a retired physician, has a brilliant brother who, while attending law school suddenly fell ill. A nervous breakdown they said. A few years ago, he finally passed away in an institution where he had spent the balance of all his productive years isolated from the world which obviously needed his genius. Or my old high school classmate whose intelligence was so lauded, one of the rare individuals from my country to be accepted to Annapolis--suddenly lost at sea during a raging monsoon storm. A handsome young man from my high school--a national science scholar--who one night, while in a drug-induced rage, raped and beat a young woman to death. He had a promising future. A beautiful girlfriend. But his mental demons ran unrecognized. He was in the perfect age when mental illness suddenly takes a grip. He was not even 20. Or a friend whom I had known since grade school who grew up to be a prolific songwriter--a beautiful young woman with little children who would grow up to follow in her footsteps: one day she collapsed from a brain aneurysm. Suddenly, she cannot compose anymore. And in an instant, the world has unknowingly lost a thousand beautiful songs. And even lately, an amazing young man overflowing with talent, intelligence, discipline and good looks will now live the rest of his life trying to sort through thoughts, perceptions and choices through the imperceptible filters of a serious mood disorder-- when cognitive thought processes can be so inexplicably unreliable and building relationships will always be unstable and fluctuating. Life indeed gives us our share of curve balls and blindsides us just when we think the world is our oyster.

I know there will be a time--a thousand years--when the world will be allowed the privilege of the presence of brilliance, talent and youth gone before their time. But until then, my heart yearns for Laura and others like her whose brightness and singular personalities enriched my life even for a brief moment. What I hope is that I do not squander whatever light I may have and that I can have a brave heart that can withstand the battles that rage inside me--the thoughts that somehow enslave me and the burdens that seem to weigh me down. These battles in my head keep me from living a healthy and safe life....as though there isn't enough brain power for me to do so.

I never in my wild imaginings thought that one day my brilliant mother would be saddled by dementia. But she now ambles along and unexpectedly, she can only remember the days from her early years when the world was full of splendor and hope. Yet she cannot remember what she ate for breakfast or who the president of the United States is. I see in her my possible future.

So while I can write and remember....while I can still keep my wits about me, I try to journal my thoughts. I have been blessed to live the better parts of my life with nothing to hold me back but my own share of baggage. But physically, I am still relatively healthy and my mind can still process my thoughts in an organized way. I was blessed to be able to make stupid mistakes, errors of judgment and carefree, self-centered miscalculations. In my youth and into my 40s, I held all these against me  and was enslaved--chained to them--enable to soar. And unlike Laura, I can still hope for more time to free myself from the millstone around my neck...my self-imposed punishments because I do still use the time I have to castigate myself for my errors, my arrogance, my overbearing nature, my opinionated pride.  I have not learned to let go. Perhaps that is why I am still around.

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"I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day." (George Washington)