TheBanyanTree: Tonight's Story

[Monique Colver]

I have a friend. She's a friend of a friend who became a friend. She used
to live in Hollywood, the Hollywood, and was married to a guy who was big
in the Scientology thing there. I met her once. She's a down-to-earth women
who's happy with living simply, and she didn't care for the Hollywood
religion.

Years ago when I was broke she insisted I had to go to California to see my
grandfather, who was 100 at the time. "But Cece," I told her, "I really
can't afford to."

"You're going to come see him," she insisted, "You and Andrew both. You'll
stay here, and you can borrow my van, and I'll pay for the plane tickets."

And she did. She wanted to do it because she wanted us to see Gramps, and
she had the money, and she was insistent, and so we went.

We stayed at her house, we met her family, her husband just for a second,
her disabled daughter for longer. Her disabled daughter, in her teens then,
told me I was too old for Andrew, and that he should go out with her
instead. Cece had her hands full with that one. She had other children, but
they were mostly grown and elsewhere, probably free spirits like their
mother.

We saw Gramps, and he and Andrew had a good talk.He was slower, and seemed
tired, but was in good spirits. It was indeed the last chance we'd have to
see him -- several months later he was gone, shortly before he would have
turned 101.

We were so grateful to Cece, but she would not entertain the idea of being
paid back. She was just happy she could do it for us.

Not too long after that Cece left her husband and moved into the wilds of
California. She'd had enough of his Scientology, something she was in only
because he was, and she refused to belong anymore. Contact with her became
intermittent. She usually was far from Inter Webs, having to trek into the
nearest town to get it. She was free and unfettered, and she moved in with
a guy named Terry, a veteran with PTSD, into his trailer out in the desert.

Every so often we'd hear from her. Sometimes she'd drunk dial me,
incoherent and rambling, but still full of love.

Then Terry, the love of her life, blew his brains out while at his desk,
while she was in the next room.

When I am at my lowest I think of how Cece found him when she heard the
shot, and I know I could not do that to anyone I love.

Today Cece posted pictures of her trailer, pictures she'd taken when she'd
returned from the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

And there was blood sprayed on the wall, and pooled on the floor, and even
at a distance of several years, and in a picture, you can see the pain, all
the pain Terry had bottled up inside, until he let it loose to run over the
desk and the floor and the walls. Pain is a deep dark red, mostly, once
it's been released anyway. Before that it can be any color, but when it
comes out, it's red.

Cece, being Cece, didn't explain the first set of pictures adequately, even
though she did say that's what she came home to after Terry was taken to
the hospital, so people were responding with things like, "OMG Cece! When
did this happen?" "Are you okay?" "What's going on?"

Then she posted pictures of what it looks like now. She has a sense of
peace there, despite it all. I know she's fallen in love since again, and
maybe out of. It's hard to tell with Cece. She's mercurial, and what's here
one day may be something else the next.

She's a lovely spirit, floating through her good times and bad, giving
whatever she has to give and not giving it a second thought.

It's been awhile since I've had a drunken call from her, but she claims
that we helped her greatly.

I know she helped me greatly.


M