Call w Davina

Call with Davina, 12.12.13

Dear Levi,

After buying Lori dinner at McDonald’s and dropping her off at the dorms, I knew I wanted to check one more time on the Walmart parking lot. The last three times I’d cruised in, I hadn’t been able to find Santana and there was a lingering panic of uneasiness in my stomach. Had something happened to Santana? Did he still work there? What?

And even though it wasn’t the first time and I had calculated it into the risk, it still cut me to the core when I saw Santana at the very edge of the lot nose to nose with Anna’s big SUV. All alone, all together. It made the tears, dry tears of disbeleif and depair, burn in my head and ignite the headache I’d been fighting all day.

As I drove off, feeling sick, I hated myself for buying a milkshake. For laughing with Lori about her romance. For being stuck in this city with my broken car. For being alive.

And I decided I might as well get everything painful over all at once, so I dailed up Davina to return her call like my parents advised.

Not going to lie… I was hoping for voicemail. Because I had no idea what I would actually say to her in conversation. I’m lousy at conversation. Especially on the phone. Maybe I’m stellar at it with my mortgagors, but they don’t know me. And there’s no drama involved, no inhibitions.

It rang four times, and she picked up. And we had the first conversation in about ten months.

Not since we talked that one frigid winter day, when I sobbed over losing Levi and she sobbed over losing him, too. And she shared her story. And I begged her to forgive me for hurting him. And I’d never loved a stranger more, than the day I first received GiGi’s letter in the agony of the summer. But then it was destroyed…. Like everything, I destroyed it. When Levi added her back on facebook, and I protested to know why she hadn’t told me, like I had any right to know about their business.. and she deleted me on facebook, blocked me… moved me out, just like Levi. Out of the way for Anna.

I was terrified when she picked up. But I tried to keep my voice gentle and my words simple.

At first she didn’t know who I was. I almost just hung up after struggling to tell her Noelle, Noelle O’Brien. Then she realized who it was and apologized all over herself, she said she thought I was her daughter in law Lola, supposed to be calling her tonight.

She asked about my family. I expected the deep sympathy. She was a wonderful lady at heart.

I told her breifly of the situation politically, but then trailed off and came around to simplify it in that my family was safe.

She said she knew that it would be hard on me so far away and she was praying. I told her thank you. She asked if I was still working, and I said yes. I told her about my visa… she was surprised. She told me that God carries the weight of tomororw, and it’s not our job. I could only tremble at what she might be refering to, but I decided to just accept it as invaluable advice. Because she is so right.

I told her it meant a lot to hear her voice. I asked about her family. Clarence had an injury.. had a surgery to repair his rotary cuff in his shoulder, and while that arm was out he was out of work for three weeks and just getting back on the job but on light duty, unable to life. She said they were having an insurance nightmare because they need a second surgery on his other arm, and they fear the tendons there will be damaged if insurance doesn’t get settled so they can do that. I could hear the stress and axiety in her voice. I hoped my sympathy and deep compassion bled through my voice over the line.

Then she shocked me when she said, We never met, but I want you to know that I miss you. I do love you and I still read your blog….

Huge tears began to spill down my face and even though I’d yelled at myself to be strong, my voice was so strained when I tried to respond. I miss you, too. I think about you every single day. It was the hardest part, not losing Levi himself but also the family that I loved.

She said she was sorry that she made me cry. But that she hoped I was doing well, and to keep in touch. And something was burning on the stove… and the phone call was quickly ended.

I drove home, and I sobbed. I cried bitter, aching, wracking tears of pure anguish, wrenched from my soul. It’s like my heart is being twisted, broken, and wrung out of every ounce of courage I have left.

I hear that she loves me. And even misses me. And tries to check on me.

There are no word for how overwhelmingly grateful I am to God. Because I don’t deserve that. And he didn’t have to let me hear that. But yet on this hard night, he did. And I cried because I miss her, too. I miss my family, that family, the family I dreamed of. And I miss Levi so much but he’s with her. And he’s not coming back to me.

I cried all the way home and all the way getting ready for bed. Even now, blistering, swollen tears sear the front of my shirt as I type. It’s an unending, throbbing pain. Ten months of silence, of moving on, of finding peace in God, and one little conversation can rip me wide open. It just shows that I can heal and grow but that love will never be gone. It’s just as deep as ever.

I read my Bible and prayed a long time tonight. I read Psalams 119… a hundred repeats, David begging God to heal him and save him, and his promise to keep God’s statutes and laws. Then I read in the Old Testament, of God annointing Saul king. Of all the things that God did to prove it was Saul. The verse that caught my attention read, And God gave him another heart, so that after the he was different…

And I cried anew. Is it possible? That God would give someone a different heart today? Not for a nation, but for a family? Not for Israel, but for us?

And that was my prayer as I crawled exhausted into bed… that God would give Levi another heart.

Your star,

Rigel