What happened to Ada - "My Promo-Mentors Writing Challenge"

My life has never been easy. There is a lot of grief in there, and yet I was always able to find meaning in the things I experienced, the loses I sustained and above everything I had faith. Religion in it’s many forms held a fascination for me. The Bible, the Quran, parts of the Thora, the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist philosophy, Norse pagan, Voodoo, Wicca and the satanic Bible just a few I researched and read. In my youth Paganism was my spiritual home, later on I evolved into my own brand of belief with strong pagan implications.

From a very early age I came to realise that all true belief, this need to serve something larger than oneself was all directed toward the same source. As teen I realised that the way you chose to see the divine was ultimately more a reflection of you and only a fraction of what the truly divine is. All Gods/Goddesses are one and just expression of the different facets the ultimate force behind the curtain and stylised versions of our own characteristics. Religious wars and misconceptions are not God made but articulation of human limitation and constricted worldview.

All my life I strived and longed to serve the divine and it became my parent when my parents failed me and life left me to fend for myself. In many ways my belief gave me a strength and a security that insulated me from some harsh blows and comforted me when living in bad situations. No matter how hard it got I felt I was not alone and that someone out there loved me even if my parents did not and I had to navigate hostile environments. You never notice how much some things sustain you and become part of you until they are no more.

I met Ada in 2008 when I was still working at American Express. Tanyetta security guard who sometimes gave me a ride after work and I had a very difficult friendship with, went to the church in which Ada was a laywoman preacher. Tanyetta had asked me to go with her one weekend and as I had nothing else to do I saw no harm in it. The Church itself was a typical southern church with a very untypical message. While there was still some of the usual “give me a donation and I will put a word in for you with god” stuff going on, which always rubs me the wrong way, the general message was a pretty progressive one- all gods are one, Jesus is our teacher, someone sexuality is their on business obsess over your own, there is no hell but what we make. The Pastor himself was a bit of a con man and full of himself, but many of the lay people were genuine and devout in their beliefs. Amongst them was Ada.

I remember the first time I saw her, slender and elegant in a white tailored pants suit. I knew from the first minute that she was special. There was always a radiance that came off of Ada it was like a halo of sort, not visible of course just something you would feel and somehow would make her seem brighter in contrast to anyone else in the room.

Ada’s life had not been easy, her sister who she was close to, was murdered when she was in her twenties. This cast the first major shadow on her life. The man she was married to was a mean drunk made her life a living hell until he finally gave up the bottle some 30 years along the line. And yet Ada mastered everything with exceptional grace. She raised her 3 children, two daughters and a son, basically by her self as her spouse at the time was just as bad of father then he was a husband. She held a full time job in the admissions office of A&T University, kept a beautiful friendly home and did tons of charity and outreach work.

I don’t like being physically touched much, Ada was one of the few people who’s touch did not make me recoil inside, in fact it calmed me. She had the softest of skin it was like warm silk. And no I was never in love with her it was more like instant family. I who do not trust easy trusted her from the first smile, that is how special she was.

Ada and I became close friends we would talk for hours on the phone. Mostly about religion, her kids and her plans after retirement which was not far away. She dreamed of travelling the world and seeing the classical wonders like the pyramids. Her eyes would light up she was so full of joy and looking forward to the things to come. I always enjoyed spending time with her and for a season we did it a lot. Then I hit an emotional rough patch, and like I always do I retreated into hermithood. Our conversations still happened but less frequent. She would ask me to visit but somehow I just never made it out thinking I would have time when I was in a better place mentally.

After 6 months of radio silence her daughter Tasha called me, she told me that one week before her retirement Ada had been diagnosed with breast cancer which aggressively metastasised and had gone to her brain. She told me that Ada was in a coma and begged me to come to see if I cold help in some way. At that time I had built a bit of a reputation as healer but it is one thing to practise herbal medicine and another to expect me to magically heal stage 4 Cancer; and yet I had to go I could not not see her and I could at least be of help translating the medical data to her kids.

When I arrived I was led into a dim room and my poor Ada robbed of her hair and dignity lay mute and still in her hospital bed. Despite the immense weight loss, despite the lack of hair she was still beautiful. I touched her hand and her skin as soft as ever was cool to the touch, my eyes welled up and I remember fighting back the wave of grief with brute force as I had to remain clear headed. In the next hours Tasha and her sister Lisa brought me up to speed on the medical front. It was not looking good. Tasha kept pleading at me for a miracle as if I were her Jesus incarnate. It was an emotionally very confusing situation as I was overwhelmed by the impossible request but also wanted to give these women the comfort that they so desperately needed. Had they come to me sooner maybe there had been something that could have been done but now hope was so beyond reach it might as well have lived in another galaxy .

I stayed the night so the girls could get some sleep. I could not, in those hours I caressed my friend played her her favourite music and moistened her lips and mouth with lemon swabs as she no longer was able to drink and her lips became chapped and cracked. Every second I was there, inwardly grieving over her silent form, I could feel smoothing hard dark and cold growing in me. How could this have happened to her a bloody week before retirement? How could the universe let this happen to someone who lived all their life to serve the divine and was the personification of good. If she had to get sick why not let it happen while travelling, why not let her have at least that, the dreams of a lifetime she so wanted to fulfil. She had been stripped of everything and it was beyond unfair.

The next day the girls came back their father in tow. There has never been much love between him and I but I remained polite faded into the background of the room to give them space. The doctor came and after a longer discussion he told Ada’s family that there was no hope of any recovery and that keeping her alive would just amount to unnecessary bills that would burden the family. My jaw dropped at the way this was being discussed, Lisa looked angry, Tasha just cried but Ada’s husband was all ears. “what do you mean keeping her alive “ I asked him “ she isn’t on life support!” He then informed me that they were planning on pulling the feeding tube, basically plotting to let her starve to death. I had never heard of something this barbaric in my life but it is fully legal in the U.S whereas assisted suicide with drugs is not. How insane is that ! Starvation is an incredibly painful process I could not believe that this was how my Ada was going to die.

Both Lisa and Tasha pleaded with their father to no avail he wanted to have it “done and over with”. The guy who had made her life a living hell now was to bothered to let her go humanely, she was dying to slow for his taste I guess. I was dumbfounded, skewering the net for legal presidents, but he had the law on his side. When Lisa left to bring Ada’s husband home, Tasha started begging me to do something, anything to not let her mother die like that. It was then and there that I decided that no friend of mine was going to starve to death on my watch no matter the consequences to myself. I had found out that assisted suicide was legal one state over I made a few calls and Tasha and I hatched out a plan to kidnap Ada and bring her over the state lines. I was going to murder someone I loved. When you make the decision to kill something in you shifts, when you decide to kill someone you love something breaks inside you.

That afternoon I made myself home to feed and take care of the fur monsters. The event was to happen on the weekend a day away, I was on autopilot. The day flew by me in colourless ,odourless, meaningless hours. Then after all the chores were done I fell into dreamless joyless sleep. The next morning, on the day I was to murder my friend, Tasha called me- Ada had died in her sleep. to this day I believe that it was a last act of kindness from an angel on earth wanting to spare a friend, I feel it was Ada’s way to try to save me. Her parting gift.

Since that day in the hospital however my faith in the divine was shattered. What seemed an unbreakable bond, for as long as I can remember, felt like a gaping hole in my solar plexus that left me hollow and cold. Losing that faith destabilised me for a long time. I still wonder if it is what turned on the gene that triggered my illness, as I showed the fist larger symptoms shortly after all this happend. While I have somewhat recovered in the years passing bye my faith and I are ad odds and while I am no Atheist I am mostly agnostic with odd bouts of precognitive ability that I attribute to my high intelligence and deduction skills. If I am honest I miss the part of me that believed i was happier for it, felt safe and loved. I am a sadder lonelier person now but there is not much I can do, you cannot force faith. It is what it is.