The Strangeness Of A Familiar Picture

That picture is of my mom’s best friend, Terry Schmidt. She inspired my mom to go into social work. We used to go on vacations with her and her two sons – the oldest, Matthew, broke my arm while we were in a beach house in North Carolina 12 years ago, the last time we were about to go to war with Iraq. She goes hiking with my mom – they’ve gone to the Grand Canyon, Bannf up in Canada…she’s as close to a sister as my mom has ever had.

That picture? It’s from a story at a Denver TV station from yesterday (today’s the 10th – this is getting posted later for reasons I’ll explain below). She’s missing in the wasteland left behind after the wildfires this summer.

She went hiking, out from the dude ranch she and her husband were staying at…some medical conference or other. She went hiking on her own and now she’s missing. Since Friday (Tuesday, around 7:30pm). Her husband called Mom today, to get a copy of the imprint of her boots – Terry Schmidt has the same boots. It feels weird to say just Terry – Mom’s name is Terry, too. When we were on vacation, her, her two kids, mom, me and my sisters, Terry Schmidt and my mom had to figure out who was calling them whenever they heard one of us say “Terry”. She’s missing somewhere in the ash…there are pictures of the search team – the kind of thing you always see when a hiker gets lost in the mountains, but not something you associate with someone you know.

I can’t blog about this now, or at the least, I can’t post about it. My little sister doesn’t know – she’s got enough stress right now, just starting at college and all. I need to write anyway, so I’m writing now and posting it later. Mom says Jo can know once we know definitively what the situation is…there’s a small chance she could come to my blog and see this before Mom tells her. My other sister has knee surgery tomorrow…Mom’s got to spend all tomorrow sitting in an uncomfortable chair worrying about her daughter and her best friend. I feel horrible – there’s nothing I can do. I’m going to feed the cat for her, but that’s not enough, or at least it doesn’t feel like enough. As you can tell from the time shown on the picture, it looks like this is a lead story on Denver TV stations. I don’t know what to think, right now. I don’t know what to do. How do you react to something like this?

This kind of thing happens on TV, but it doesn’t happen to people you know. My first memory is of sitting with her son in her apartment in Cambridge – hardwood floors, sun coming through the window…she was here for my sister’s college graduation in May. Oh my fucking god. Oh god.

I keep flashing back - images of seeing her in May at Megan's graduation, remember her and Mom drinking pina coladas in North Carolina...and then I have this sick sick thought, of her covered in soot, dead. I can't fucking get the image out of my head. It just won't fucking stop. I'm being selfish, getting hit this hard - she's Mom's best friend, she's Matthew and Thomas's mother. She's not a biological relation of mine or anything. But she is the closest to family Mom really has. She irritated me at times...her social workiness got a little out of control when we were kids in North Carolina's Outer Banks on vacation...I'd get yelled at for saying shut up, that sort of thing. But still - someone who's played a significant role in my life, and a truly massive role in Mom's, has disappeared. She's probably dead - I don't want to think it, let alone say it, but odds are, at this point. She only had two bottles of water, and they've been hit hard by the droughts out there. No - I've got to stop thinking about it or I'll just start crying. God, I feel so...I don't know what. Not weak, per se. But sure as hell not strong. I need to be - Mom's on the verge of total collapse. I'm expecting to be taking off a couple days from work the next week or two. Christ, I may have a funeral to go to. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

This can't be real. I can't believe it's real. I know it is, but jesus, someone I know, the missing person on a Colorado news story? Does that really happen to real people? It can't, right? Not really. Oh god...

Ok - I know why this is really freaking me out. She's the same age as my mom. She has a son my age - that's actually why Mom and Terry know each other in the first place. A friend of Mom's has a daughter a few months older than me - Mom got hand-me-down maternity clothes from that friend. After I was born, Terry got passed those same maternity clothes while she was pregnant with Matthew. She has another son the age of my middle sister, just out of college. She disappeared while hiking, which Mom traveled around to do with her...this could be Mom. She fucking is a Mom - Terry may be the only other person who I can really see as a Mom, not just a mother, if that makes any sense. She's Mom's other half, her inspiration, her hero. Oh, Mom. I can't imagine how much you're hurting right now...

...

It's Wednesday morning now. I've been spooked since waking up - I dreamt about someone dying, though I have no idea who it was. It just went past 8:46, the anniversery of the first plane hitting the first tower. And I just found a news story at a Denver TV station, from about half an hour ago...they've called off the search. She's being treated as a missing person now...I have this sick feeling that they won't find her for years. Oh, god. I feel like maybe I should call Mom, and let her know, but I just can't. It'd hurt her too much right now. She'll hear from Wilts later today...just let her get Megan into surgery and then she can deal with it, to some extent. Oh, Mom. Oh, Terry...oh god.

...

4:55pm, 11 Sept. 02 - ok, so I just chose that date format 'cos I'm tired of 9-11. Part of me was actually irritated that all this happened on the same day...people at work would mistake my moroseness for a reaction to a year ago, which it isn't. At all. I got tired of it then, I'm tired of it now. I'll rant about that later, on the blog. I actually just wanted to update on the situation... Megan's fine. She had nasty anesthesia reactions her last couple surgeries, but came out of this one in really good shape. Yay! I'll be seeing her tomorrow afternoon when I go in and visit her and Mom. But then there's the painfully depressing side...

The official search teams have called it quits. The county still has people in the field, according to Mom, but the majority of the searching now is being done by people brought in by Wiltz, Terry's eccentric genius of a husband. I'll introduce you to him later - he's one of the most remarkable individuals I've ever met. But anyway - he's hired a bunch of trackers, brought in teams of search dogs, he's got people on motorcycles driving through the wastelands looking for her. He's a motorcycle fanatic - an article in the Denver Post from yesterday mentioned him telling a friend he wanted to go out and search for her himself, on motorcycle. The two of them go out to the salt flats at Bonneville and set land speed records - they've each held a few for a while. The records are determined by engine size, so it's not like they actually went faster than rocket cars, but Terry held two or three different motorcycle engine size land speed records. When Mom and I visited them in Indiana back in '95, while I was visiting colleges, Wiltz and Terry tried to get me to ride a motorcycle. I got freaked out at the idea, but Mom was all over it, riding around behind Wiltz as Terry cheered her on. That's what Terry has brought to Mom's life - courage. The courage to go back to grad school and get a job as a social worker. The courage to say "I'm not happy in this marriage" and end her marriage with Dad (a very, very good thing for both of them). The courage to ride a motorcycle, hike the Grand Canyon, climb mountains... Terry pushed Mom to do things she was too timid to do on her own. She's been Mom's big sister, a figure she never came close to having at any other point in her life - her cousins are all either signficantly older than her or younger.

Anyway, Wiltz hasn't given up. He's got a pretty considerable amount of money, and it seems he's determined to spend whatever it takes to find her. But at least one of Terry's sons, Thomas, the 22 year old, has given up hope... Mom's going to go get them either this weekend or early next week, and take them down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where we all used to spend a week every summer for, what, 8 years or so? That's where Matthew (the 24 year old) broke my arm, rough-housing at age 12, and where Thomas cut my cornea playing basketball two years later. We saw wild horses, porpoises, and crazy electrical storms. We played mini-golf and Trivial Pursuit (girls vs. boys - until they got frutrated at me, Thomas and Matthew winning all the time, and broke up our team so that it was girls vs. me vs. Thomas vs. Matthew), Mom and Terry drank pina coladas from a frozen mix, sitting on the porch and watching the waves. When Mom told me the plan, I just lost it. I haven't fallen apart like that in...well, exactly a year. But this hurts me more than WTC did. I broke down last year because I overexposed myself to horror. Now, for the first time in my life, someone close to me whom I still see as young is gone - maybe not forever, but for now, she's definitely gone. She's my Mom's alter ego, for fuck's sake. How do I react to this?

I have Matthew and Thomas' dad's phone number - they're staying with him right now. I'm trying to build the courage up to call them, but I don't think I can do it. I don't think I can keep from bawling my eyes out, and they don't need that right now. I'll call them tomorrow - I'm only going to work for a couple hours in the middle of the day, after my furniture gets here and before I go to Boston to see Megan and Mom. I want to call them, but I have nothing useful to say...