Normally, I do not interact at all, even with computers, when I first wake up. But I have got to get this in writing before I forget.

The picture you see above was taken in either 1991 or 1992. I am the one in the yellow shirt, my friend Angie is the other girl in the jacket, and the guy in the middle is my friend Tom.

I met Tom in 1991 at a party held by a bunch of people he went to school with. One of my friends, Amy, was part of that group and invited me. I remember thinking he was so cute, but he had a girlfriend, so I picked up a guy named Jason instead. Somehow, we exchanged numbers and spent hours on the phone talking and flirting with one another. One thing I noticed about Tom right away, even then, was that he was brutally honest. I thought that was kind of cool and wished I could be so brave. I learned that Tom was in love with a girl named Marie, and that they had just broken up. I was also still in love with my first love at the time, so we had something in common. We made plans to meet at Amy's cousin's house, where there was another party. At the party, we held hands, walked around the block, and even gently pushed me up against a tree in front of their house and kissed me. We also made out in Paul's bedroom, laughing at his Pound Puppy sheets and comforter. That kiss rates up there with one of the best I have ever had in my life. For years, when he told that story, he would always turn to me and say, "Hey Sondra, isn't that the time you pushed me up against the tree?"

After the party we continued talking every day. Back then, "You Could Be Mine" by Guns and Roses was on the top 40 in a big way,because of the movie Terminator 2. I remember Tom telling me that song reminded him of me. When I asked him why, he said, "Do I have to explain it? YOU could me mine, but you're way out of line. Sheesh." Later, he explained that we were in fact perfect for each other...but maybe in another life. He was still in love with Marie, I was still in love with my ex boyfriend, and we figured the two of them to be the reasons for why we could never be together. (Yes, I was dramatic even then. What's weirder is the fact that Marie and my first boyfriend ended up actually knowing each other and being in the same circle of friends.) But our friendship blossomed into something we never would have had otherwise.

A year later, when I was 15, I accepted a date from a guy named Tony at my school. I asked him to pick me up at the Gap, which was a Christian hang out for kids in our area. Tom's father was involved in it in some way, so I usually went every Friday night to see Tom and hang out, since we went to different schools. (As a matter of fact, this picture was taken at the Gap.) Tony came to pick me up and we went driving. He kissed me, and it wasn't so bad, so I kissed him back. But then, he became more than a little overzealous and began pawing at my clothes and panting in my ear, and tried to lay me down on the front seat of his truck. Because I was such a non assertive person back then, the only thing I did in defense of myself was tell him I had to go because my Dad was picking me up early, instead of just kicking him in the fucking balls. Tony knew he did something wrong and he kept apologizing, but I was thoroughly sickened and just wanted to get away from him. (He didn't do anything illegal, but I was grossed out by him just the same.) When he dropped me off, I ran into the Gap and grabbed Tom, and in tears, told him what happened. He immediately went storming outside and attempted to yank Tony out of the truck, but Tony saw him coming so he closed his door and stomped on the gas. Tom started yelling and threw some bottles at his truck. Then he turned to me and gave me a hug, and ten seconds later he started yelling at me for going in the first place. "That guy was a freak. You could have been raped," he said. Of course, he was right. Back then, I had absolutely no sense. Sometimes I still don't but I am happy to report that I am wiser in the ways of men.

When I was 16 and ended up pregnant, Tom knew the circumstances surrounding it,and he never judged me. He would only listen. We were both getting a little older, getting our driver's licenses and acquiring more freedom, and learning things about the world we didn't know, or thought we knew, anyway. I had hooked Tom up with a few of my female friends that I thought he would like, because I knew how particular he was. He still wasn't completely over Marie, but at least he was dating all over the place. My cousin, who went to school with him, called him a "ho." He was, I guess. Because he played football and was good looking and popular, it wasn't hard for him to get dates. He wouldn't take me anywhere when I was pregnant because he didn't want people to think we were a couple and that the baby was his. (LOL) But he would come over, cuddle, and eat and watch movies with me. This could only happen while my Dad was at work, because, even though I was already pregnant, BOYS were not ALLOWED in my room when he wasn't home. Even trying to explain to him about me and Tom did not work.

When I went into labor, I had a condition called "placenta previa" which caused me to bleed out all over the place. My Dad called 911 and somehow he got the emergency room on the phone. I'm sobbing, waiting for the ambulance to show up, and Dad thrusts the phone in my hand. I hear, "Sondra? This is Tom's mother. You have to listen to me. Are you listening? I need you to breathe. Sondra? Listen to me. Breathe." But she had said the magic words, which were "Tom's mother." I knew she was an OBGYN nurse at the hospital I was going to deliver my baby at, but I guess I didn't really realize she might actually be there during the birth of my baby. I had never met her in person, but I had talked to her on the phone plenty of times. So the ambulance takes me to the hospital and both me and the baby are in distress. She ran into the room, along with a bunch of other people, and while everyone was sticking me and prepping me for surgery, she tried hard to keep me focused on her and not the panic around me. She told everyone, "I know this girl, she's a very good friend of my son's," as she held my hand. The last thing I remember is seeing her face donned in a surgical mask before my lights went out. LOL.

A day or so later, Tom called me in the hospital, and said he heard that I almost didn't make it. He said that he would have been so sad if I had died. I laughed and said I wasn't going anywhere any time soon, that I was going to be around for the rest of his life. He laughed and said, "I don't know if that's a curse or a blessing. I guess I'll take it as it comes." Taking advantage of the tender moment, I asked him to come and see me. He immediately replied with, "Hell no. I don't want to see you like that, all bloody and bloated and unwashed. Screw that. Call me when you get home." We both laughed, but he meant it. He would not be coming up to see me. His mother came often, and Tom sent her with flowers once. He was the only person who did, but it didn't matter. I knew he cared without the flowers.

After my baby was born, we spent a little time together. We both had discovered pot by then, so it wasn't unusual for us to skip school and drive around in his little white Cavalier, getting high and listening to Cracker and talking about everything. At this point, he was in love with Jaimee, a friend of mine I had introduced him to. They had this really intense on again, off again relationship peppered with sex and fights, and more sex. He really fell for her in a big way, and one time, when they were "off", they met at Jaimee's house and had sex, and Tom fell asleep. Sometime in the wee morning hours, they were awakened by footsteps coming up at the stairs, and Jaimee began throwing his clothes at him and hissing for him to hurry up and get out because her boyfriend was coming. Tom frantically tried to dress but he wasn't quick enough. The bedroom door opened and her boyfriend, Doug, who was a big guy, saw Tom standing there half naked and lunged at him. Tom, without thinking twice, dove out of her second story window and plunged to the ground, and when he hit the ground, he began running for his car. Doug, in the meantime, had flown down the steps and flung open the front door and was in hot pursuit. Tom got to his car just in time and screeched off, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and had his wallet in hand. When I got that phone call, I couldn't stop laughing. I knew it wasn't funny, but I could just picture it. I remember asking Tom if he was going to give up on her now. I was kind of hoping he would. He responded with, "Why should I?" as if being chased by a fucking bear was nothing but a momentary inconvenience and not a threat to his physical well being. I shook my head and stayed out of it. Eventually the relationship ran its course, but it was always something funny....Jaimee driving off in his car, Tom calling her with someone on three way to see "how she felt about me".....Jaimee fucking one of his friends....Tom fucking one of her friends..and the list goes on.

When we turned 18, I had a girlfriend and so did Tom. He was not surprised or turned off by the fact that I had a girlfriend. He didn't ask to join in with us, either, which is usually the standard response. I made the mistake of telling him how touchy Rachael was, and one day he showed up while she was there, making comments like, "I'm going to kiss your girlfriend now, is that okay?" and "What's your bra size? Because, I mean, well, there doesn't appear to be anything there." LOL. Rachael got pissed and said she didn't like that "cocky motherfucker." I just laughed. He did kiss me goodbye at my front door, right in front of her, dipping me down and making moaning sounds while he pulled my hair to make it look like we were making out. I was laughing hysterically. As he walked out the door, I said, "Tom, you know I love you." He said, "Yeah, yeah, you know I love you too." That was the last time I would ever see him.

From 1995-2000 we kept sporadic contact, talking about three or four times a year. Right before I moved to Grand Rapids with Rachael in 1995, he told me he had bought a ring for his girlfriend, Kerry. He even brought it over to show it to me. I asked him if he was seriously contemplating marriage. He looked at me like I was nuts and was like, "No, not right now. But later." It was a pretty ring and I told him so. I even talked to Kerry on the phone a few times. I liked her a lot. Tom later told me that he had an instant attraction to Kerry because she was like me. When I asked him what that meant, he said, "Just what I said. She's just like you, only not you." When I asked him what in the hell was wrong with me, he just got huffy and said, "Never mind. You don't get it." I get it now.

In the summer of 1999 I called Tom and admitted to him that my life was fucked up. I was living in Kentucky, had no job, and was in the middle of some stupid relationship bullshit with the panty wearing faggot. Tom told me I was being stupid. He told me to just come home. I said that there was no way I was coming back to Michigan. Then he sighed, and said exactly this: "Sondra, there are two kinds of people in this world that I hate. Stupid people and fat people. Stupid people because, they're...well, stupid. And fat people because they know they're fat, yet they keep on eating." I laughed at this, because he was being honest. Then I told him how fat I've gotten. He said the rules didn't apply to me because I wasn't stupid (even though I was acting like it at the time) and even if I was fat, he had yet to see it. But he still wanted me to come home. I tried to get him to come and visit me instead, and he said that he would have some time off from work after Christmas and maybe him and Kerry, who was still the love of his life AND the mother of his son, Tommy, who had just been born, could come down. I got so excited and said I would love that. I wanted to meet Kerry anyway, had been wanting to meet her for four years, and I could not wait to meet his son.

In December of 1999, I called Tom again to wish him a Merry Christmas and told him I had my own house, a beautiful double wide mobile home right on the Ohio River. I was describing living in the hills of Kentucky and he said it sounded nice. We talked for about an hour, and then he put Kerry on the phone. We chatted for a minute and I could hear the baby in the background. I said I couldn't wait to see them all and if they couldn't come down to Kentucky, then I would come up there since I did frequently anyway. I remember Kerry saying, "Well, either way, we'll all get together." It did not happen that way. My only comfort is that the last thing he ever heard me say was that I loved him. The last thing he ever said to me was, "I love you too."

About two weeks into the new year 2000, I was out with the panty wearing faggot (referred to as PWF from now on) for a couple of hours shopping. When we got home, I had two messages, one from Angie and one from my cousin Sarah. Sarah said, "When you get this message, you need to call me right away." Angie said, "When you get this message, you need to call me right away. Don't go anywhere. Call me now. I have something to tell you." She sounded slightly subdued and I told PWF it was probably because her little sister had gotten pregnant. Her little sister had this serious boyfriend and they were talking marriage, but I was almost certain that's what she was going to say. I picked up the phone and called her back while putting away the stuff I had bought. Angie kept telling me to sit down. I kept laughing at her and telling her I had things to put away, and that I was fine, she could just tell me. She kept insisting I sit down. (Angie can be a bit dramatic, too.) Finally I laughed, sat down in my kitchen chair, and said, "Okay, Angie, I'm sitting down." PWF was standing right next to me, watching me. (He was as nosy as they come.)

She wasted no time. "Tom is dead, Sondra."

I sat frozen for a minute, and then I said, "What?"

She repeated herself. "Tom is dead, there's been an accident. Honey, I am so sorry. I know how close you were."

I sat there in total and absolute disbelief for a moment, not saying anything at all. My mother has died, both of my grandfathers have died, but that all happened in the eighties and I was a little kid. I was not prepared to hear those words.

I slammed the cordless phone to the floor at PWF's feet and picked up my chair that I had been sitting on and hurled that across the room. I began hysterically crying and screaming, "No no no no no," over and over again. PWF rushed over to put the phone back together and when he did, he called Angie right back. I heard him say, "What did you just say to her? She's losing it!" as I ran throught the entire house, knocking stuff off of walls, smashing dishes, yanking sheets off the beds, grabbing at my hair and screaming. I guess Angie must have told him, because he hung up the phone and grabbed me, trying to restrain me. I pushed and shoved at him, saying, "She's lying. I just talked to him. She's just trying to piss me off. HIS SON IS NOT EVEN A YEAR OLD!" PWF did not respond to anything I said, just tried to hug me close to him. I wouldn't let him. I literally destroyed that entire house, screaming and crying and carrying on. My mind heard it, and there was no reason for Angie to ever make that up, but I so badly wanted her to be lying. The look on PWF's face was one of pure pity because he didn't know how to make me understand that my friend was gone and was not coming back.

Finally, I told PWF, through my tears and fits of hysteria, that I was going to call his house and get him on the phone and that would prove that Angie was lying. He didn't try to stop me as I sat down on my daughter's bed and dialed his number. His sister Katie answered. Tearfully, I asked for Tommy. (She had to have known I was crying.) She told me to hang on a minute and put down the phone. I looked at PWF and said, "See? Angie's a fucking liar. His sister is going to get him now." He said nothing. I waited for less than a minute, and then Katie came back on the phone. "Sondra?" she said. "I have to tell you something." I immediately began to wail again. She patiently waited, sniffing back her own tears, and then explained to me what happened. "Tom was on his way to work and was driving in the fast lane. There was a semi truck in the fast lane on the other side of the expressway. There was a small car behind the truck. The car wanted to get around the truck and sped up to pass it, but there was a patch of ice he didn't see and the driver lost control of the car and smacked into the trailer of the semi, which caused the semi to fishtail and flip over the median...right on top of Tommy's car. He felt no pain, he was dead instantly." I just remember crying over and over again about how I couldn't believe it, and Katie told me when the funeral was going to be. She also said there was going to be a viewing, but then they were going to cremate him. After I hung up the phone, I just laid down on the bed. I didn't move for two days. I just laid there. I didn't watch TV, I didn't answer the phone. PWF, who didn't live with me but usually stayed on the weekends, finally came to me on Sunday night forced me out of bed. "You need to take a shower and get out of this house. Enough is enough," he said. He took me to a card store, where I bought Tom's family a card to mail. I could not bring myself to attend the funeral or the viewing. What is there to see? That's not my friend. That's just his body. Not only that, but I knew it would send me over the edge.

I walked around in a state of intense pain and loss for quite some time. Several times, I picked up the phone and dialed his number, only to hang it up quickly when I realized he was not going to be there to answer it. Never again would he answer my calls. Never again would he hug and kiss me, or tell me he loved me. My friend was gone, and for good. I had to move on. But it was so hard. I mourned for a long time. Eventually, I realized that if Tom could see me, he would be highly pissed. I could just hear him saying, "What the fuck are you doing, whining around for? What a cry baby. I'm fine. Hello? You hear me? I'm fine, Sondra. Stop being a sissy." Over the course of a couple of months, I started to heal...slowly but surely.

Now, almost six years later, I think of him often, but always with a little smile. I try to remember all the fun things we did. The only time I ever choke up is when I hear that song, "Heaven's So Far Away," by the Offspring. Then I feel the pain anew. Like no time has lapsed. But most of the time, it's like he's right here with me. I even had a dream about him a couple of years ago, when I first moved to Florida, in which he kept telling me, "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm all right." But I couldn't figure out why he kept saying that. I told my sister Kathy about the dream. She's a big believer in Sylvia Browne (so am I) and told me that normally when we have a dream like that about someone who has passed over to the other side, that it's considered an "astral visit." Obviously, they're not really there. But they're visiting you in your subconscious. They always appear as the way you imagine them...that's part of the subconscious too. Not only that, but if they appeared as the way their spirits really are, it would scare the bejeesus out of us. We are not prepared for that until we ourselves cross over to the other side. But it is their way of telling us that everything is okay. They take the shape and form that we recognize and try to pass the message on that they're fine. It's the only way they can.

So that brings me to the reason for this entry. Last night I had a dream about Tom that was kind of scary. I rarely dream about him, so I always tend to remember what happened in the dream pretty vividly. Angie was there, and me, and a bunch of other people. We were working, but we were outside. I don't know exactly what it was we were doing. I know that there were planes involved. And in walks this young girl, maybe 16, to our mostly 28-35 crowd. I asked Angie who the hell was the young girl. And she said, "Oh, she's with him," and pointed to the guy standing next to her that was TOTALLY Tom, except the fact that his skin was gray and appeared sallow, and he had dark circles under his eyes. I stared at him for a minute. He didn't really move, just kind of stood there next to this young girl. He was wearing a white shirt and khaki pants, but the shirt actually appeared gray and somewhat dirty. I remember thinking in my dream, That's Tom but he's still dead. That's Tom but he's been dug up. That's Tom but he doesn't know he's dead. He looked like a zombie, and he kept looking at me with a smart ass grin on his face. I kept telling Angie, "I think that's Tom," and she kept saying, "No, he just looks like Tom. Tom is dead. Remember?" Finally I went up to him and the girl and I said, "Do you know you're Tom?" I got no response, just the same smart ass grin. Throughout the whole dream, he stayed by the young girl's side, who didn't seem to notice that he looked like a zombie. He was always looking at me, and always grinning, but never said anything to me. The thing that freaked me out was that he looked like someone who was living dead. I can't describe it. The young girl makes sense because Tom was only 22 when he died. But I have no idea what this dream is supposed to mean. I woke up chilled to the bone and came straight to the computer. Is he fucking with me? Is my subconscious fucking with me? Why did I dream about him? I don't get it. And why was Angie there? It seems that in the dream, he represented himself, but no one else knew but me. Fucking weird.

Dreaming about him always wakes me up wishing he were here. Strangely, I also feel like I have made contact with him in some way. Every time I dream about him it's like that. Like we touched for a brief moment. Maybe we did.

Tom, I love you so much and miss you every day. I often wonder how close we'd be if you were still here. I know that you'd be in my life, at any rate. I am so glad I knew you. You were a great kisser. You were an even better friend. But please don't scare ths shit out of me by showing up in my dreams as some kind of half dug up zombie. You scared the shit out of me. Of course, that's probably what you were trying to do, you fucknut. I love you. Did I say that already? You will never be forgotten. Peace, brother.