Sandy was one of three women I shared a large room with. A row of filing cabinets lined the middle of the room dividing it into two halves. Two workers were on either side of that row of cabinets. She was a very quiet woman who kept mostly to herself. A few weeks into my new job, I found myself alone in that room for an entire Friday. A small radio sat atop the cabinets and played a local radio station all day, just for background noise. As I was alone, I changed the radio to a Contemporary Christian radio station. At the end of the day I forgot to change the station back.
On Monday, around 9 a.m. I heard Sandy ask, "Who changed the radio to that channel?" After a small discussion among the others I shyly said, "I did. I'm sorry." I knew by the tone in her voice she really didn't care for "my" music, so I quickly changed it back. Nothing more was said.
Over the course of the next couple of years, Sandy and I became acquaintances. She wore hearing aids, so small quiet talk was out of the question, but we would carry on conversations in the break room from time to time. As soon as our conversations would begin, she made it very well known that she had no use for Christianity. I asked, "What do you believe?"
Her response was, "I am a Unitarian Universalist."
I then asked, "What is that?"
Sandy replied, "It is a group of people who believe that each person should follow the path of their own choosing in peace and harmony with others, without condemnation for those who believe differently. We believe that each religion is true for those that follow it."
I simply replied, "I see. I have never heard of it before and was just curious."
I asked her if she thought Christianity was a viable religion and she said, "I don't believe in it."
It was that moment which brought me to a place of asking myself, 'Can you still love and like her even if she never wants to hear about your God?'
I immediately responded, 'Yes!'
I promised myself that I would never bring up my God. I would love her and be friends with her and let her live her life as she chose.
In 2004 my oldest son, who had graduated with her youngest son, was to be married at a large Southern Baptist Church where we attended. I invited all the people from that office, although I had left working there at the time. To my surprise, Sandy came to the wedding.
The wedding was one of the most spiritual weddings I have ever been to in my life. (No thanks to me, since all I did was provide food for the rehearsal dinner and even forgot to order any kind of dessert!) The director of the Baptist Campus Ministry performed the ceremony, Worship Music was played and sang throughout and a sign language team used sign to perform a song. After the ceremony I walked over to Sandy to thank her for coming. She was smiling from ear to ear and couldn't stop talking about how beautiful and touching the entire ceremony had been. She followed me into the gymnasium for the reception and stayed until the last person left. Over and over again she commented on the beauty of that service. I had no response except to smile and give her another hug, telling her how much she honored me by coming.
I now fast forward a few years to 2010. I was working midnights at Briggs and Stratton. It was about 8 a.m. in the morning. I had taken my son to school, taken a shower and a dose of melatonin and crawled into bed when my phone rang. It was a co-worker of Sandy's whom I had worked with also. She said, "I'm sorry to call like this, but I wanted you to know that Sandy is in Western Baptist in Paducah. Apparently she fell sometime in the night and her oldest son was there to hear it. He couldn't get her to answer him so he called an ambulance. After testing they determined that Sandy has a brain tumor and they are going to do surgery today. She is in ICU."
"I thanked her for letting me know, but since I had just taken sleeping medicine I thought it best not to make a 45 minute trip until after I had slept some. Later that day I hopped in my car and headed to the hospital. I walked into her room and she was semi-conscious. She kept smiling at me, but I knew she was probably in la-la land due to anesthesia and medication. She definitely couldn't carry on a conversation. I held her hand for a few moments, then left and bought a gift and flowers at the gift shop and asked that they be delivered to her room.
Things for Sandy didn't quite go as smooth as she had hoped. Shortly after her release from the hospital she suffered a couple of seizures. Now medication was added for those. Then another set-back as she suffered a stroke. Months of rehabilitation to help her walk again and people helping out with food and other services. Slowly she regained her strength and ability to use her hands and feet and returned to work, but it was obvious that the result of it all was vast memory lost.
The only way I can adequately describe it is in terms of the movie, 50 First Dates. You could have a conversation with her today, see her tomorrow and she would begin the same conversation over again, never remembering the previous one.
I would see her at Kroger or Wal-Mart or out and about at MSU activities from time to time. We picked right up where we had left off, or basically where I had left off and it was as if we had not been apart.
In the fall of 2010 I started attending a new class in Murray at the invitation of a co-worker at Briggs. The class is called Torah Tuesdays. At first I had a lot of difficulty with the class, because it required me to leave my comfort zone and put aside the things I had learned my entire life, (only for a moment), so I could see a bigger picture. This class soon became my life's blood. It was giving me something for which I had yearned all my life.
Sometime in late 2012, as I was walking into class I looked up to see a very familiar face, Sandy! I went running to her and said, "Girl, I am so glad to see you!"
Sandy then asked how long I had been coming to the class and I told her for two years. We sat together on the front row every Tuesday evening from that point on. The teacher of that class also teaches a Sunday School class in the same method on Sunday mornings. Eventually Sandy began attending those classes also. Many Tuesday evenings, after class was over, she and I would stand in the parking lot and talk for hours.
Sandy would not miss that class for anything if she could help it. Still, I just allowed myself to be her friend without any strings attached. This past June during class I began to notice how she would go to sleep in the middle of class. At first I thought she was really tired, but it kept happening over and over each week. Then I attended a Sunday morning class and again, she would just go out while writing. I was very concerned, afraid that the brain tumor was back. In late July I saw her at the grocery and she informed me that she had been to the doctor and found that she had Pneumonia.
Aha! I thought. That explains a lot, but just a few days later on Tuesday as we were sitting down at our usual spot, Sandy turned to me and said, "I found out that I don't have Pneumonia, I have a large mass on my lung. I go back to the doctor next week."
I tried to be encouraging as much as I could and told her to think good thoughts and that perhaps it was really nothing after all. That night as usual she nodded off and I looked at her paper, because she had been writing when she fell asleep. There were a few illegible scribbles yet in the middle of those were the letters FAITH in large letters.
Sandy's mass turned out to be stage 4 small cell carcinoma lung cancer. She was diagnosed on her birthday and lived 15 days more. She passed away while our Torah Tuesday class was in session.
That session was so powerful to me that night. I knew her condition was grave and she had only hours, but the words our Teacher gave were monumental. We have been taught that in Judaism, at creation, Adam and Eve were created perfect and placed into a perfect world. When they fell, they fell into an imperfect world. The teacher said it like this, "Have you ever put together a 600 piece puzzle. The top or picture on it is magnificently beautiful and full of a tremendously bright light, but the back is just dark, ugly cardboard. It is all put together and suddenly you upset the table it is laying on. As the table falls, the puzzle comes apart and is scattered everywhere. Some pieces fall under the couch or into it. Some are scattered into the dark recesses of the corners and others lay out in the open. Some you cannot see, because they are upside down and all you can see is the darkness, while others are proudly sitting face-up showing that brilliant light. Well, that is this world we live in. God's presence in this world is apparent, but not revealed. Each of us was created in the image of God and that contains a spark of divinity and unlimited creativity. Adam and his descendants will put the puzzle back together again one connection at a time."
Wow! He is talking about Sandy. She was created in the image of God and contains a spark of divinity and unlimited creativity. She talked about that class all the time. In fact, she called me last week from her hospital room and was laughing about possibly going home the next day.
"If I can get settled in by next week, I hope to be back in class on Tuesday. I just love that class," she said.
I have no way of knowing if my friend ever said those magical words the Church expects people to say, but this I do know. She LOVED Torah class and my God has told me in His Word that He looks at the heart, not the outward man.
All I have done for 14 years is to love her without expecting anything in return. What I never really realized until now was how God was going to allow me to see the puzzle of her life after it was completed. It is not often that we are allowed to see the part we play in another's life. As I began to think back over those years of knowing Sandy I began to see how each and every piece of the puzzle had fallen into place, in God's timing and in His way, not mine.
Rob Bell wrote a book a few years back entitled, Love Wins. The book received very negative reviews from the Church, but having been on this ship with my dear friend let me tell you, Love does win! My friend Sandy, a woman after God's own heart. Amen!
In memory of my dear friend, Sandra Garfinkel 8/18/48 - 9/2/14
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