God, in the Details: A God of All Comfort

I learned of a dear friend’s passing a couple months before the pandemic hit the U.S. last year. My friend Missy was always like a big sister to me. We met at the turn of the new millennium, both newly hired Analysts for a policy and procedure development team within the company. We gelled instantly, becoming inseparable at the office, taking breaks and lunches together, always at one another’s desks or on the phone at home till late in the evening, discussing the latest book releases like Eric Jerome Dickey or TV shows like Desperate Housewives. We understood and supported each other, and I value those types of relationships deeply. However, Missy’s layoff from our company a few years later and my divorce after that put a peculiar space between us, taking me down an altered path that eventually meant a new life and zip code. We’d still text or call one another occasionally, but with the birth of the Littles, my next set of children (twins, plus one), even that dwindled down to maybe 2 or 3 times a year, eventually. Still, anytime we spoke, it was like old times.

I believe it divinely arranged that God reconnected our lives in Missy’s final months, me contacting her in mid-August 2019 after thinking I’d seen her drive past me at a gas station on her side of town. Excitedly, I reached out via text:

Hey Sis!! Happy Sunday — hope all is well. Was rolling through GP. Did I just see you? White car?

She responded back with startling news. No, I hadn’t seen her because she’d been home recovering from rounds of chemotherapy after a recent stage II breast cancer diagnosis.

Wait, what? Surely, I’d mis-read the text. My heart fell to my feet as I sat still on the couch, mouth open, processing what I’d read. The tears raced down my cheeks as I typed my next message: Can I call you?

She said yes and I quickly dialed the number, her catching me up with all the details of her journey over the last several months. I learned a lot in that conversation, one, that her ongoing dental issues had been the initial indicator that something was amiss with her health, but she didn’t learn that until after the cancer was found. Two, was how utterly fragile life can be. Missy was less than two years my senior, having just turned forty-seven. She’d always been relatively healthy and loved her little family: a husband and two teenage children — one boy, one girl. Her daughter had recently graduated high school and gone off to college down South. But most of importantly, I realized how horribly I’d missed our connection throughout the years.

We cried together and talked a while that night before finally disconnecting, then my phone blew up with photos of her and the family, Missy eagerly catching me up on all that I’d missed in our distance. I prayed for her hard that night and in the days to come, still not knowing how serious a situation she was facing. Because I was on meds for strep, I couldn’t immediately pay her a visit, not wanting to risk her exposure to anything in her weakened state of immunity.

After my recovery from strep, Missy would have days where she was too weak and tired for company, instead sending me a text with updates. Her hair, once long and cascading down her back had been a casualty of the cancer. She was to see a stylist for alternatives to the hair loss she was experiencing. I’d send a bit of encouragement through text, letting her know how beautifully blessed she was despite what she was going through. She was indeed a warrior in my mind’s eye.

Fast forward a few weeks and all four of my babies were tag teaming with illnesses. It was that time of year and the change in weather had gotten the best of them. I still hadn’t seen Missy, and it bothered me. I just needed to have a comforting convo with my friend. In late September, she sent me a pink rubber bracelet for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, asking me to wear it in her honor. I graciously accepted.

But then, something happened. She stopped texting or responding to a few of the calls I’d placed. I thought it strange, but eventually, got distracted with legalities at work and put the visit on hold yet again. One week became four and the next thing I knew, it was January. I was sitting in a restaurant having lunch when I got a text from a colleague asking if I knew what had happened to Missy. My heart sank immediately. After a few texts were exchanged, I tiptoed over to the internet to view the obituary. She had passed just mere weeks after she’d last text me. A huge amount of guilt encompassed me as I replayed all the things I should’ve done differently, like worn a mask to see her, as long as I could see her (it never dawned on me then) or maybe getting her husband’s number so I’d have a point of contact in the event I couldn’t reach her.

I pored through our texts and mourned the loss of my friend for weeks until God and the pandemic offered a chance encounter that would turn things around for me.

By April 2020, having been holed up in the house for weeks, my family and I went on a staycation at a nearby hotel to take advantage of the low rates and change of pace amidst the national scare recently thrust upon us all. This particular weekend, we stayed in a city a bit further from home.

Early that Saturday morning, as we traveled to a few grocers in search of toiletries and disinfectant, I called out to everyone in the car, “This is where she lived. I don’t know the exact house, but she’d shared the street cross-sections. It can’t be too far.” Missy’s memories consumed me, and I fought back a few lingering tears. She’d given me the new address, but I’d never made it to that particular home. We continued through the area toward the grocer and my family waited in the car while I visited the neighborhood Tom Thumb. Surprisingly, I couldn’t have been inside the store more than ten minutes when I spotted her husband, now a widower walking within mere feet of me. I was floored. I hadn’t seen him in more than fifteen years.

It took a few moments to muster the words to speak, because I didn’t want to stir his emotion in such a public setting. Things were still raw for me, so I could only imagine how he had been coping. But I believed God allowed our paths to cross for a reason and I couldn’t let that moment pass.

I approached him. “Hey there. How are you? I’m Shatona, Missy’s old friend. I don’t know if you remember me with this mask on,” I began. He nodded. “Hey, I remember you. How’ve you been?” I answered him and made small talk before eventually asking the question I’d been silently pondering since learning the news. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but what happened? She told me the tumor was shrinking.” He conveyed to me many things that connected the dots, his answers so forthcoming and weighty that I knew our talk was helping him as much as it helped me.

We spoke for the next fifteen or so minutes, fully engaged and oblivious of all passersby — in the middle of a grocery store at the start of a pandemic, nevertheless comforted by Missy’s memory. The kids, he said, were adjusting. He also seemed to be holding up well. While battling her illness, he’d learned, he told me, some things about Missy he never knew before their family entered therapy to help deal with the cancer diagnosis. My biggest takeaway was her denial about her condition. She couldn’t have given me a heads up about what was really happening with her because she still hadn’t fully accepted it herself. I can only imagine the level of disbelief that comes with that kind of news.

After only three to four months, Missy took a sudden turn for the worse and succumbed to her cancer on the 1st of November, making it through the end of a month dedicated to the education and eradication of her disease (National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October). I left that store in awe of God’s timing and His grace toward me for allowing that encounter. A burden was lifted, and my steps got lighter after that pandemic experience. Because if it hadn’t been for COVID-19, I likely would have never visited that store to bump into him. It was a meeting I won’t soon forget, and it changed the way I viewed the pandemic thereafter. I know that good things still come amidst the unthinkable.

I miss my sister friend. Maybe not as much as her husband, children or extended family, but her life and friendship left an indelible mark on my heart. We are born to expire, and none of us knows the day, so for now, I’ll remain thankful that our paths even crossed.

Rest in peace, Missy. You always asked which character you were in my first manuscript. But I did you one better. You got your own ‘short story’. Love you, girl. Always and forever.

-Tona

*God, I’ve beheld Your power at work in my life despite the circumstance, and I thank You still today for being a God of all comfort. (2 Corinthians 1:3–5)