Filling the Void

I’m very fascinated by relationships. I probably should have been a psychologist or something. Well, maybe not. Psychologists aren’t supposed to cry with people in distress, drink with people who are confused or tell depressed people to ‘snap out of it!’ Regardless, I am always amazed at how friendships start. What unlikely series of events occur that connect people. Or, how is it that old friendships, once drifted apart, are brought back together.

For example, my former college roommate, Kathy, and I lost touch right after graduation. We didn’t really mean to. She moved to Atlanta. I moved to Los Angeles. We didn’t communicate for over 10 years and then, one day, both of us ended up taking our husbands to the emergency room of a hospital in Aurora, Colorado where we saw one another and immediately rekindled our friendship. It turns out we even lived in the same neighborhood! We might have lived within a mile of one another and never know about it if our husbands hadn’t both needed critical medical attention at the very same time.

I admit, relationships come easy for me. Anyone who knows me would say that using the word ‘outgoing’ to describe my personality is something of an understatement. But aside from the fact that I talk with just about anybody, I have also become acutely aware of how people’s lives intersect with mine.

When I was taking the train to work I met an interesting man who, most days, took the same route. Our acquaintance began when, due to schedule changes, the train ran late and RTD gave $5 Starbucks gift cards to everyone. He said he wouldn’t ever use his and asked if I wanted it. I did. And we started talking. We chatted on the train home from work several nights a week for many months. When I stopped taking the train, I stopped seeing him. I have no idea why we met and chatted all those evenings but I’m sure there is some reason.

Or, there is the woman who I’ve run into for several years, here and there. Sometimes I remember her name. Sometimes I don’t. I’m pretty sure she never remembers mine. Mostly because she always asks. When I worked at the library she came in and visited with me frequently. Years later we happened to ride the same bus. Just this summer she wandered into Steve’s booth at the art market while I was there. Usually we just chit chat. But, for some reason, our lives intersect every so often.

I’ve met people with whom I felt an instant attraction. An instant desire to know and become friends. Others I could take or leave. Still a few that I’d just pass on, thanks. But, I always wonder why I either feel a connection or I don’t. What is it that attracts us to others? I read a book about limbic resonance a few years ago. The limbic region is the place in our brains that resonates, on an emotion level, with other mammals. The book never explained why I could feel that resonance with some people and not others, though.

In fact, I’ve actually had a resonance with a woman I never met.

When we bought our house there was a little bedroom downstairs that we didn’t need at the time. I thought the wallpaper in the bedroom was unattractive but it matched a quilt that my grandmother had made so I kept the paper up and used the quilt as a bedspread in the guest room.

A few years later, as our family grew, we moved Charlie into that bedroom. But before we did, I stripped the ugly wallpaper. As I painstakingly tore sheet after small sheet from the walls I thought about the person who had chosen it. I pondered who she was and the fact that she had lived in my home. She called it her home at one time. In spite of her poor taste in decorating, I wondered what kind of person she was. Truthfully, I became a little obsessed with wanting to know about her. I found out a few weeks later.

I loved my house but, every so often as our kids were growing up, Steve and I would decide that it was just too small and embark on a house hunting venture. Inevitably, we would come home and decide that we didn’t want to move. I could never make up my mind that we really needed a bigger house. Leaving mine would feel too much like leaving an old friend.

Except once.

We were driving through a neighborhood, dropping one of our kids off somewhere, and a house caught my eye. It had a ‘for sale’ sign in the unkempt yard and something about the house just called to me. I was captivated. I had to see inside.

We had a realtor take us through it and, in spite of the immense amount of work it required, I was absolutely enthralled with the house. If ever I was going to leave my current beloved home and buy another one, this would be it.

But Steve had other ideas. He didn’t share my enthusiasm for the house at all. Yes, it had a nice floor plan. Yes, it had more room. All Steve could see, however, was the amount of work necessary to make it habitable. His point was that the house we currently lived in needed a lot of work. Why would we buy something that needed even more? Eventually I acquiesced, content to stay put in our crowded, little house.

A few days later I was visiting with my neighbor, Trish. She had four little boys who always reminded me of characters from Tom Sawyer. Blond, freckled, sunburned and barefooted. To tell the truth I thought they were hooligans. Anyway, she told me they were moving. While I secretly cheered, I asked where. She told me the address. That was my house! The house that called to me out of the blue! The house I had wanted to buy!

I immediately told her I knew exactly which house and how much I loved it. She went on to tell me that her best friend had lived in the house with her husband and children but had fallen on the ice in the driveway, suffered a brain aneurysm and died the year before. Trish, wanted to buy it and live in it to feel close to her friend.

Well, okay, when she put it that way, she could buy the house.

And then, in the most offhanded way, she added, “Oh…she used to own the house you live in.” Wait. She was the one who had put up the hideous wallpaper? She had owned the current home I loved? This person I’d never met, moved out of the house I loved and into the only other house I’d fallen in love with? And then she died?

I didn’t really like the pattern.

But what were the odds? Probably about the same as the odds of meeting my long lost roommate in an emergency room 10 years later, I’d guess!

That night I sat in the downstairs bedroom and thought about the woman I’d never met but whose spirit must have had something kindred to mine. Sure, they are just houses, but the only two houses that I’ve ever loved and desired to make a home were the same two that some woman I’d never met had loved. And now, she was dead. I’d never meet her. But somewhere our spirits met.

Since that experience I’ve become acutely aware of the people I meet. Even in passing. Why do we connect with some people, and not with others? Why do we fall in love with some people, and not with others? Why do our paths repeatedly cross with some people, and not with others?

Mysteries.

I don’t think I’ll ever know the answers to my questions. But, I can be intentional about paying attention to the people whose lives intersect with mine. I can show them kindness, and caring, and love. We might not notice the void in our souls before crossing paths with others. That doesn’t mean the void isn’t there.

Waiting to be filled.