Another sleepless night. Tossing and turning with muscle spasms and body aches. My Lyme disease had flared up again. I’d been taking antibiotic cocktails twice a day for a year, but the disease had gone undiagnosed for too many years before that. I’d become a prisoner of my illness. I had to quit my job. I couldn’t get out much. My husband was more of a caretaker than a companion. None of our children lived near enough to visit very often. What was the purpose of my life anymore? I wondered. I couldn’t even get a decent night’s rest.
I got up and pulled on my robe. A computer waited in a small room down the hall. It took me into other worlds, to help block out the pain. I surfed the Internet and ended up in a chat room for women. But it was empty. Just like my life.
Tears slid down my cheeks as I stared at the blank screen. I typed a message. “I don’t know how to suffer with grace. I don’t want to live any longer. God, if you are everywhere you will see this.”
I buried my face in my hands. When I looked up I saw that the name Barbara was on the screen. “I’m not God, but I want to talk to you,” she wrote.
Barbara in Tennessee chatted with me in California for an hour. We wound up exchanging e-mail addresses. Finally I went back to bed and slept better than I had for a long while. I knew I’d found a friend.
Barbara was my first thought when I awoke the next morning. I turned on the computer and wrote to her. From then on it was California to Tennessee and back again every day.
“Today was tough,” Barbara wrote one evening. She worked in social services, just like me before I was sidelined with Lyme disease. She told me of a sad situation I’d seen many times on the job. That wasn’t all we had in common. Barbara and I discovered we’d both been born in Pennsylvania and had lived in many of the same places. She also had a grown child she didn’t see often enough. Barbara and I could talk to each other about anything.
“We’re like sisters who were separated at birth,” I told her more than once. We each had a telephone plan with a special 20-minute rate. We called once a month. One of us set a timer for 20 minutes, then the other would call back so we could talk for another 20 minutes. Before we hung up we always said, “I love you, Sis.”
Barbara and I often laughed about how strange it was for us to feel as close as we did considering we’d never met face-to-face. We talked about getting together after I was fully recovered. “Let’s move to a tropical island,” Barbara said. “Or go on a cruise!” Our big plans.
In 1998 a series of tornadoes tore through Barbara’s area of Tennessee. Telephones and electricity were out. Every time the phone rang I hoped to hear her voice. I constantly checked my e-mail. Hours became days. Without my newfound friend and sister I started to crawl back into that dark place inside myself. Keep her safe, Lord, I prayed. And keep me safe, too.
Then the phone call came: “Hi, it’s me,” she shouted.
“Thank God. I can’t imagine not having you in my life.”
“I’ll always be in your life,” Barbara said. “We are sisters forever.”
I saw Barbara through that disaster, and she saw me through the forest fires that threatened my area in 2001. My Lyme symptoms abated, and I felt better. We continued our daily e-mails and our monthly phone calls. We exchanged gifts. Nothing arrived for my birthday in 2003, but I knew Barbara was overworked that summer.
The day after my birthday she asked in her e-mail how I liked the gift she sent. I hadn’t gotten it. “I’ll put out a tracer at the post office tomorrow,” she said. “On my way to the doctor.”
She’d been having stomach problems. We both thought it was the stress from long hours on her job. But Barbara’s doctor admitted her to the hospital to run some tests. I awaited the diagnosis.
“The news isn’t good, Sis,” Barbara said when she called. “I have pancreatic cancer. The doctors don’t know how long I will last.”
I dropped to my knees. “Please don’t die,” I whispered.
“It’s okay. Remember, I’ll always be with you. I love you, Sis.”
Her words still hovered in the air when she hung up. Her daughter called that night. Barbara had told her all about me. Her mother had gone into a coma. Two days later Barbara died.
I didn’t think I had any tears left, but I cried nonstop. I would miss her so much. Her monthly phone calls, her daily e-mails, her constant friendship. And I never got the chance to see her or hug her. Now all our big plans to meet were nothing but a pipe dream.
On the day of Barbara’s funeral the doorbell rang. It was the mailman with her missing birthday gift, delivered first to a wrong address.
My hands shook as I opened the box. Inside was a heart-shaped pin of small rubies, with a note tucked underneath: “Bought this at a two-fer sale. One for me, one for my sister.” I would wear mine every day.
I called her daughter to tell her I had gotten this gift at last. She told me that Barbara made a special request to be buried wearing her own heart-shaped pin. “So my sister can find me in heaven,” she’d said. I have no doubt of that. God helped us find each other here on earth. He knew the perfect setting for our big plans to meet.
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