august 28, 2007 - visiting an old friend

when i read at the local town paper last week, i noticed a familiar face smiling on the picture. could it be mariela i thought....

i started to read the article, making sure that the face connected to the name and by the time they mentioned the schools i used to go to, the year we graduated, and our upcoming 10 yr school reunion, i realized it was my good friend mariela.

in the article, it states that she was one of the only female iraq vet (from this town anyway) to go to the local VA hospital (in the same town). she has been been there since 2005 (for 7 mos, she was in a coma) and currently is undergoing physical therapy.

WTF...2005?? where the hell have i been? and the past two years i have been thinking about her, wondering where she was b/c before all of us parted and walked into our adulthood, i heard that she was going to live in switzerland. and apparently she did and came back to the states and although she is currently not a US citizen, she served the country she called home.

while i couldn't visit her after reading the article that week, i went today...and it totally woke me up.

in middle school, she was one of my basketball girl partners-in crime. i think she was one of the best players i know back then. and boy did we have fun.

in high school, street ball became obsolete considering they never took care of their courts. she still shined when playing sports and was a hilarious classmate during our debate sessions in civics class.

today, i saw her in her room, sitting up watching tv on the hospital bed and me trying to see if she can recognize me. she said, "i know your face, but i don't remember your name..." (yeah i do have that kind of a face that people can remember :p) i told her and she smiled and i ended up introducing her to my daughter. she was taken aback because her daughter's name is jayla (not sure if it's spelled that way, but i'll do the best i can) and i had to repeat several times so that she can remember her name. to refresh her memory, i named most of the classmates i thought she can easily remember; most of which were familiar to her, but most of the times she can visualize the person's face from before. i wasn't trying to expect her to be the same mariela from high school, i wanted to see how much she changed because of what happened.

the change was a lot, her speech is much slower, and probably due to the incident that left her in a coma at some point, her thoughts are really jumbled and would require help to remember things. she has a wheelchair next to her bed, and requires help to shower and go to the bathroom. i hope she can walk again...but she needs her inner strength to pull her thru, at the moment, it doesn't seem like she's ready yet.

i feel sad about her story, but i'm glad she's alive. she's alive to see her 3-year old daughter and she's alive to see us once again @ the class reunion. i will see her again next week and bring the yearbook to stimulate her mind to remember things from the past- she really loved talking about it. i'll even bring my laptop and show pics of some of the people we went to school with now and update her w/anything about our old friends.

it sure is good to see her again....