Yesterday when I got home, Matt met me at the door. "We're going to have an eventful evening," he told me. K.T. had decided to go ahead and have her hair lightened and dyed, and wanted us to come over for dinner so we could see it and take a picture. And Ashby had called and left a message on our answering machine asking us to call him as soon as possible, at his townhouse or at his parents'.
Matt said he'd tried both numbers and not gotten an answer. He played the message for me. The normally exuberant Ashby sounded exhausted and drained. Something was wrong. My first thought was that perhaps his grandmother, who's been ill for some time, had passed away. My second thought was that he wouldn't have called us about that - just dropped out of contact for a little while and then explained when he came back. My third thought was, Oh, god, I hope nothing happened to 'Manda. Amanda is Ashby's sister. He's fairly close to her, and she's been married for less than six months.
I thought I'd try calling Ashby's parents' place again, on the theory that he might have been en route. This time, Ashby's mother answered the phone. I told her who I was and explained that he'd asked us to call. She told me, "I'll let Amanda explain," and handed off the phone. I've never before felt both relief and dread at the same time.
I explained again for Amanda that I was a friend of Ashby's, and he'd asked us to call. Amanda said, "Hold on while I get the funeral information."
"Funeral?!"
Amanda apologized - she thought Ashby had told us - their father had died.
I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. I stammered out my sympathies and felt tears welling up. I looked up at Matt and mouthed the news to him; saw the same reaction wash over his face. Amanda gave me the address and phone number of the funeral home and the times for the funeral. I reiterated my sympathies and said my goodbyes, and hung up.
I tried Ashby's number again, and this time he answered the phone. Matt went upstairs to get on the other line so we could both talk to him at once.
It was worse even than we thought. His grandmother had indeed passed away - last Friday - and Ashby had been the one to find his father's body Monday evening. He'd had to fly Tuesday to pick up his mother and bring her home. His father had apparently had a massive heart attack. The doctors believe that he died quickly, which is a small mercy.
Ashby was subdued but calm on the phone. He didn't think he needed us to come for the funeral, he said - he'd just wanted to hear his friends' voices. We hadn't really known his father at all. Ht thought K.T. would want to come up - she'd practically lived with Ashby and his family for a while after she and Matt had broken up, and she liked all of them.
We realized that it was about the time K.T. was due home from the hairdresser's, and thought we'd get off the phone so she could get through when she heard the message on her answering machine. We said goodbye - assured Ashby that if he needed anything he had only to ask - and hung up.
The Okra is dead. I never met him, and yet it seems somehow unreal that the world should continue turning.
I feel for Ashby's mother. In three days, she lost her mother and her husband. I try to assimilate that - to absorb it. I try to imagine how I'd feel if it happened to me, but I can't get a handle on it. It's too big. Too enormous for comprehension.
As expected, K.T. and Kevin are going to lend emotional support to Ashby. They gave me a stack of books to be autographed this weekend at SheVaCon. K.T.'s new hair color looks nice, if not quite what she had in mind. Yes, I took pictures, but I forgot to bring the disk in, so you'll have to settle for a written description - it's a darkish strawberry blonde on top, deepening to a rich honey brown where her old dye job had changed the texture of the hair.
Since Matt and I had forgotten to bring dessert with us, we went over to the mall and had Cinnabon for dessert. I'd actually wanted a cinnamon-sugar pretzel from Auntie Anne's, but they'd run out of cinnamon-sugar to dip the pretzels in, and since we showed up less than half an hour from closing, they didn't want to make any more. So I had a Minibon, which turned out to be quite enough anyway.
I'd wanted, while we were at the mall anyway, to stop in at a couple of stores for some things, but I'd forgotten that the mall closes at 9 during the week, so they were turning out the lights in the food court by the time we'd finished our dessert. Ah, well; another time.
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