She moved into the empty dying house house next door and immediately brought it back to life. Before I met her I could hear her laughter across the open windows, and the all too often crashes of her trying to get her mini motorbike down the stairs ...mostly unsuccessful and more in the style of somebody who enjoys the crash just as much as they enjoy the ride. Despite the amount of noise she made I never actually saw her those first few days - although right away I dubbed her noisy laughing girl.
When I finally crashed into her she was in her Pajamas walking down the street and although she was with a friend I took one look at the pair and I knew before she spoke that this was the laughing girl .....she had on bright flannel plaid pants and a matching bandanna....her personality floated around her like a cloak....... a bright tangible energy ....and from 6 feet away I saw the shocking blue color of her eyes, matched only by the intense red of her hair.
We were friends before she finished saying HEY IM PEACHES and I blurted out HOLY SHIT YOUR BEAUTIFUL ! We both burst out laughing and I was so drawn to her I changed course to walk her home .....It was that easy with her......
She was always outside, always talking to somebody, always laughing and making me laugh along with her. Even in the fall when it started to get cold she still left her windows open and I could hear her constant shrieks of laughter float across my driveway. She was young and totally ridiculous, with a personality she could barely contain and a smile she could never hide. I loved living next door to her, where her daily humor made my second pregnancy so MUCH MORE BEARABLE......and her crazy life something I understood and loved watching her live.
The day started out so beautiful .......but Its funny what you remember about getting bad news.......how it freezes time with its shocking power and can take you down in a split second.
I couldn't have been more unprepared. Although It was Black friday I wasn't shopping ......instead going to find out the sex of my second child .....I had JUST walked out of the Doctors office when the phone rang and my sisters voice made strange with the horror slammed into me with her message .....SUSIE .....PLEASE DON'T COME HOME.
Thats when time splits...into the before and the after. I drove home like a zombie in shock and disbelief........sure I was going to pull up and find out there was a mistake ......I was sooo positive that Peaches was going to be sitting outside and greet me with her laughter.
What greeted me instead was "the truth."
The truth that was silently waiting in the outrageous amount of flashing lights and police cars parked haphazardly across the entire length of my block...as if they came screeching to a halt ....ready to run in and save a young girls life .......not knowing it was already too late.......
The truth that silently screamed its warning to me across all the seemingly miles of CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS tape strewn all over my street. I ignored it and all the police who tried to stop me, barely getting out " I LIVE HERE " loud enough for them to hear .......My entire driveway filled with flashing cars and covered in yellow tape...once only the place I lived and now part of " the crime scene".
The truth whose voice I heard for the first time in the numerous police radios that went off with PREGNANT FEMALE APPROACHING crackling a warning to each other as I walked down the street to my house.... and I knew the multiple cops who stepped in front of Peaches gate were there to prevent me from pulling a crash thru.
I was too in shock to even try. Somewhere on that walk down my street, the truth got her message thru to me...and I knew ... .....Peaches was gone and in so brutal a manner the police even looked uncomfortable. The urge to run into her house to prove them wrong was reigned in only by shock .........but only long enough for her body to be removed, the police and news vans to leave and for a few days to pass. When it eventually wore off it was replaced by a insane urge to face what my friend had gone thru .......to see if I could feel her there......and to honor her struggle the only way I new how .....with flowers in the tub she died in .
It was a mistake. I shouldn't have gone. Im not sure why I thought crime scene clean up means they actually clean everything. THEY DON'T. It only means they remove the body and all the evidence. What they leave behind is the story ........no words tell this story......and none are needed. Every chapter shown clearly in the blood splashed all over her walls, and the drag marks on the floor .........the big pool of blood left on her bed told me more than I needed to know about how long she laid there suffering and scared. The smell of death was all over the apt, and accompanied by the buzz of all the flies who were probably first on the scene........
It took me a while face the bathroom and thats when horror hit me like a tidal wave ........the smell was so overwhelming I wanted to run, but I was frozen .....glued to the spot by the sight of the pieces crime scene left behind .......bright red chunks of the gorgeous hair I used to play with all the time...........now left behind as if they weren't once a part of her.......unimportant and irrelevant despite being the fact they told a very important piece of the story .......SHE FOUGHT BACK!!!!
I stood there a LONG time staring at that tub with memories running thru my mind......and with her voice echoing in my head " Sue with those dogs you've got I feel so safe living next door to you " ..........and my voice in my own head trying to apologize to her and understand WHY I was home and didn't hear anything......
....... thats where the torment begins......everybody whose lost somebody knows that torment......this time much harsher because I was one of the closest people to her while she fought for her life....outside in the yard 20 feet from her....inside my house ...maybe 30 feet from her ......how the hell did I not hear my friend fighting the war her walls told me she did ??
It was in that bathroom that I felt the child inside me grow restless .....Alex kicking me so hard as if to say shes gone mommy but Im here ...take care of us ....and this isn't healthy !
..... it was the old age old battle of death verses life........staring at death but feeling life inside me .......and its what finally made me take flight. I ran out of her apt, not even hitting the front steps before the panic replaced the shock and the urge to wash it all away took over. I spent hours and hours that day in the shower trying wash the smell from my hair and the scene from my mind...... something not entirely possible. Not even now.
Black Friday 2006 was the beginning of a few very hard years.....where tragedy, suffering and loss became too familiar to me.......in an unbelievable series of events that to this day I still cant quite wrap my mind around. But although Im in a beautiful place at the moment and am healing .....those stories still aren't ready to be told.
Today is Peaches day...........and its time to let go and move on. Shes not next door, her battle is over, and I know wherever she is....shes smiling and laughing. Three years later her house is filled with laughter .....and I again walk outside to see people on the steps and calling out to me from "her window". Ive been inside her house a few times but its still a struggle for me. Im very good friends with the people who have moved next door, the house has been completely renovated....however for whatever strange reason ...the tub my girlfriend died in was left in place. Last time I went up I could feel her strongly in the hallway outside the bathroom, and my neighbors tell me strange and funny stuff happens all the time. I have no doubt its Peaches playing with their baby....maybe trying to teach him how to throw HIS bike down the stairs the way she loved to do to hers........and I know if I ever hear that familiar crashing of bike meets stairs .......Im in a place where Ill be able to laugh about it and finally say GOODBYE PEACHES.
