By Oye Scott
PROMPT — I will not rest until ...
I’m sitting on the edge of my Sleep Number Bed because there are no numbers that can quell the angst I feel today, the second day of 2023. Two of my good girlfriends are dying. As I sit looking out the window watching the birds, squirrels and deer negotiate the four bird feeders with more respect for each other’s space than I’ve hardly ever see in humans and will never see in my two friends' lives. Ever again.
I share my first name with one friend, we also shared a man or two, some weed and for a short but intense season a glass pipe for freebasing. I was fifteen when I met her and living far beyond my years. I was her brother’s new girlfriend. He was in his third year at the University of Illinois. She was a freshman.
We clicked immediately. I needed someone to look up to and she needed someone to look up to her. It worked for a while until I was captured by a big bad wolf of a man who insisted I needed nothing and no one but him.
Thirteen years later, I looked up my old friend. I had healed and transformed myself into a positive productive member of society who also wrote stories, poetry and had married a “good man.”
She married a good man, too so the first day we got together, we compared notes on what that term actually means.
A good man, hmmm. From where I sat, his top qualities would be non violent, generous and loves children since I came with five.
Her top three were smart, but she didn’t distinguish between book smart and street smart, nor did she realize that, yes he was ambitious, but his was blind so she was fair game. When she did realize it, she owed the IRS $57,000 dollars and he wanted a divorce with spousal support.
Oye Scott writes, "I’m 62 two of my closest friends are dying. Need I say more?" She writes from Olympia Fields Illinois.