The STUFF Sisters

One evening last winter – not the one that ended yesterday when the sun rose in its glory, but the winter of 2009-2010 – I was sitting in my darkened office at STUFF. I like working at night when the store is closed and the lights are off. I turn on just one task light over my desk, and I attack the minutia of retail. To say I was diligently working on the brain-numbing details of inventory would actually be correct. I was so close to finishing that task, and I had come in after the store was closed to have total silence and full reign.

Then the phone rang. The voice on the other end said, “Your husband says you’re working very hard, but I want you to come and have drinks with me at the girl’s night I just threw together.” I hemmed, I hawed, I bandied about the “I’m so close to finishing and I really need to work because I’m a self-employed business woman and this is what we do” speech. It fell on deaf ears, and I was in my car a few minutes later heading to exactly where the beckoning had sprung from.

My friend Missy had pulled together a wonderful group of women that evening. She says she “threw” it together, but it really seemed to have come together as if by magic. The women I met that night were a mixed bunch to me. Some I knew by name and some I met that night for the first time, but one woman was in the nether region between the those two. She was a dear friend to Missy. She and I had been introduced numerous times at Bar Natasha, and I had seen her perform professionally on many stages in Kansas City. But that night, we talked – about kids and husbands and friends and commitments and responsibility. She is someone you don’t forget easily – her eye contact very focused, her laughter extremely contagious, and her singing voice coming from her whole body, not just her lungs.

And today, while I was sitting in my fully lit office, the phone rang. Missy told me that her dear friend Karen had died very early this morning. The cancer that had re-visited her body – and this time aggressively – had won. I was speechless for a minute. Missy and I continued to talk, and we re-confirmed with each other our deep hatred for cancer. Many other things were said, like “I love you” and “Take care”. Then we hung up and went back to doing. Doing things. Tasks. Work.

There was a silencing in my universe today of a voice I will never hear again. I can fill that silence with peace. I can fill that silence with hope. I can fill that silence with friendship.

I will do all of those things after I live in that silence for a bit longer.

I grabbed this photo from Missy’s facebook page without her permission. She’ll forgive me.

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