Sarah

This post is about my friend Sarah. Sarah and I go way back. Way back. We gestated together at the University of Michigan graduate library while our mothers, best friends then and to this day, worked in serials cataloging (that’s fancy library talk for the back room). We were born six weeks apart.

Sarah went to UofM and I went to Michigan State. She got a double major that included Women’s Studies and I got a minor in Women’s Studies. She had gone though a beautician program in high school and she liked doing hair, so that’s what she continued to do for a living up until this week.

After I graduated from college I was ill for a couple of years. I couldn’t work much and I lived at home with my mother. Sarah would come get me and color my hair, or we’d go to the movies, or to Denny’s and drink coffee and eat french fries because that’s all we could afford, or just drive around. One night we plotted a crime – to take a street sign that said Lavender Lane for her bedroom. Problem was we were out driving in the country at 2 a.m. and by the time she decided yes, she really did want the sign, we were lost from the sign as well as everything else and the crime didn’t happen.

Sarah has at least one very special ability that I know of. She always knows where north is. You can say, “Sarah, where’s north?” and she’ll pause and then point, day or night. That didn’t help us with the Lavender Lane sign, though. The sign, apparently, wasn’t north.

Sarah talked for a long time about moving to Atlanta and five years ago at my wedding she told me she had finally done it, she was moving in just a few weeks. About a year ago she got married herself.

Three days ago Sarah was working out a local gym with a friend. Sarah is in good health, good shape, thin, and a vegetarian. She started seeing black spots and her friend took her to the ER. She tried to give them her social security number but finally said, “I know it, but I can’t say it.” She vomited and lost consciousness, a stroke. She could be roused to consciousness for 4-5 seconds that first day, but was paralyzed and couldn’t speak. Two days ago her brain swelled and then began a series of strokes, each causing further brain damage.

Sarah is brain dead tonight, on a ventilator and a feeding tube. Her family is gathering in Atlanta to say good-bye and she’ll be taken off life support in the morning. Tonight, at least her body is still alive. And I’ll take that. Because it’s something I’ll never be able to say about my friend Sarah after tomorrow.

Good-bye Sarah.