The Butterfly Woman

Inspirational song: The Invisible Man (Marillion)

I'm processing some heavy, heart-rending news tonight. I saw that one of my Marillion friends (it's the easiest way to describe us) posted that she had lost a friend tonight. Automatically, I told her I was sorry for her loss. She had to tell me that we shared this loss, and I sat and shook, heat radiating from my hands and face, while I waited for her to type the name of the friend we had in common who has been taken from us. It took my breath away when I learned. It was someone I love forever (I am using the present tense intentionally). I don't know how to absorb this. This person taught me a lot about self identity and love on one's own terms. And I really don't know how to tell this story without giving away personal details that even in death are not mine to share without permission. My friend was one of the most complex humans I have ever known.

I need to start more than a decade before we met. When I was a teenager, months before I started college, the Marillion album Misplaced Childhood was released. I found it, and I found my lifeline. I listened to it all the way through (these were the cassette days) over and over, and every time I felt rested and at peace by the end. Within a month or two of getting it, I was using it as medicine, when I would wake in the middle of the night with my gallbladder on fire (undiagnosed), and listening to that album straight through would relax me enough to go back to sleep, and survive the painful attacks. On Christmas Eve my freshman year of college, one of these gall bladder attacks actually turned out to be a precursor to appendicitis, and I listened to the album three times during the night, not wanting to wake up my dad in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, asking to go to the emergency room. I have always credited it with saving my life. That night earned the band, in its various incarnations, my eternal devotion.

In the late 80s, the band switched lead singers, and separately, their clout in the music industry diminished. It wasn't until 1997 that the former lead singer, known by the nickname "Fish," made it back to the US for a concert tour. I was living in North Carolina at the time, but I flew to Denver by myself to see him at the Bluebird Theater. It was at that show that I met my friend for the first time, wearing a t-shirt with Fish's logo on it, and the catchphrase, "With an 'F,' dammit!!" (As opposed to Phish.) I asked about the shirt, having heard about them on the internet message board called the "Freaks list" where I lurked, too shy to speak up. We had a nice little chat, for being strangers seated next to each other, but I recognized my friend's name as a regular contributor to that list.

Five years later, I was living in Oklahoma temporarily, taking care of my grandfather's properties after he passed away. The Freaks list had a few splinter groups, and I had found my voice on one of them--the Freakout group, one I joined just before I met many of my now beloved friends in real life, at another Fish concert, that time in Atlanta. The Freakout group was planning a get-together, officially, a "garden party," in Oklahoma City. How perfect. I went. This is where I really got to know my friend from that show years earlier. The friend was now on spouse number two, who I met, along with a son and daughter from the first marriage. Other garden parties followed over the years, including one in Omaha, when this friend lived there. We grew close, keeping in touch mostly online, and we were jolly rivals in fantasy football.

It was a few years after the Omaha garden party, after my friend divorced a second time and moved to Chicago, that the transformation happened. We were told that there would be a Facebook hiatus, and then a triumphant return. Our friend came back an entirely different person, in all possible ways, with a new name and a new outlook on life. It was shocking, but the absolute joy this brought was unmistakable. I supported the change then, and I still applaud the courage it took, and the love of self it showed.

Two years ago, my man and I flew to Chicago for a whirlwind vacation, for the express purpose of seeing Marillion (with their second lead singer, Hogarth not Fish) perform two nights in a row. We got a hotel downtown, walking distance to our friend's tiny apartment now shared with a new love. I had the time of my life. I didn't hold back anything, hugging my friend (I'm not usually a voluntary hugger), smiling and laughing more than I usually do around people I haven't seen in years (I'm strangely shy that way), and I made it perfectly clear how happy I was that my friend had uncovered the true self and found pure happiness.

A horrible accident a year or two prior, when a schoolbus ran over my friend on a bicycle, meant a cane, and some pretty cushy handicap-accessible seating for the four of us at the two Marillion shows. We settled in to a four-top table on the first riser, facing the stage, drinks in hand. Steve Hogarth came out to open the show, singing "The Invisible Man." It's a thirteen and a half minute powerhouse of a song, that starts out haunting, and ends up screaming in rage and pain before admitting defeat, and begging "leave me be." The song begins:

The world's gone mad
And I've lost touch
I shouldn't admit it
But I have
It slipped away while I was distracted
I haven't changed
I swear I haven't changed
How did this happen? I didn't feel myself
Evaporating

I turned to look at my dear friend, that first night of the show, right as the line "I swear I haven't changed" was sung. There was a look of utter bliss and humor at how dramatically EVERYTHING had changed. We made eye contact and laughed like best friends.

A few days ago, this darling person told us that deep vein thrombosis had forced a hospital visit. Then, two days ago, the report was clotting in the lungs. Yesterday, we were told to expect a release today, and a prescription to coumadin. The quote was, "This experience has been extremely and emotionally frightening. I'm looking forward to many, many more years of sunrises."

And tonight, there will be no more sunrises. It is too much to bear.

Love you forever, my friend.