The Importance of Being

The Importance of Being

By

Jamey O’Donnell

To say I was obsessed with her would be an understatement. From the time I saw her as a street mime performing on the 16th Street Mall, I was dumbstruck by the fluidity of her movements, sliding down an invisible rail to a cauldron of bubbling oil seen only by me and her, being burned horribly, then leaping away from the source of her horror into a powerful stream of ice water flowing from the heavens, alleviating her pain and suffering, turning into joy, with all of her emotions in sync with her body, as if they were one and the same.

Then surrounded by children enraptured in her wonderment of being, she became an angel dressed in white, and began to feed on their delighted giggling and coos I witnessed, as if it were her life’s blood.

Though she was every bit a human being, in that capsule of time, she seemed ethereal.

She could have been a ghost at that point, and it would not have mattered.

She also could have been an angel sent down from heaven especially for me.

I knew I had to know her. I could not let this moment in my life pass, with her becoming a memory of someone I once saw that moved me.

The silence had become the most beautiful thing I could imagine, and everything made sense to me at that moment. There could be no sound to interrupt the majesty of her movement or the crookedness of her smile.

I watched her perform for the next 15 minutes and followed her and her troupe down the length of the mall, until finally their performance ended.

I watched at a distance because I did not want her to see me wanting to be next to her. In a world of malevolence filled with ill intent, I did not want to scare her away, though I longed to breathe her in, to catch her scent and imagine for a moment that she knew me and appreciated my existence, my attentiveness to her, and my willingness to be whoever she wanted me to be.

I would do that for her.

I always carried a writing tablet and pencil with me, and as she began to change into her street shoes, I wrote her this.

“Miss, don’t be alarmed. My name is Walter and I was completely enraptured with your performance. I would love to buy you a cup of coffee. The reason I am asking you this in a note is because I am deaf from birth and I cannot speak. It would be my great honor just to spend a few minutes with you, in a very public place of course.”

I folded the note and worked up the courage to walk toward her, and with every step, it felt as though I was about to make my last plea to God for entrance through the pearly gates.

She didn’t notice me until I was standing over her as she was tying the shoelaces of her tennis shoes, and when she looked up, I handed her the note.

At first she did not know what to do, whether to accept it or not, but she then acquiesced and took the note from my hand. I hoped she could not see me trembling.

She opened the note, and after reading it, she motioned for me to sit down next to her on the bench, much to my relief.

Sitting next to her only magnified the intensity of my connection to her.

I could breathe her in, and she smelled delightful…a mixture of honeysuckle and lilac, two scents that married my feelings together with my already desperate longing to know every single solitary thing there was to know about this divine creature.

Then it happened.

She began to sign to me, and the world as I knew it exploded into a kaleidoscope of feelings with bright colors I had never seen before, as she was telling me that she was deaf as well.

We were of kindred spirit and there would be no uncomfortable silences between us, just an understanding that could only be known between her and me.

“Walter, I have to get out of this frock and take my makeup off. Can we meet here tomorrow for cake and coffee? By the way, my name is Lisa” Lisa signed.

“That would be wonderful. Marlowe’s at 11?” I signed back to her.

“Perfect. I will see you then” she signed, and then she reached out her hand to my hand, embracing mine and sending an electric current throughout my entire body, then she walked back up the mall in the direction I first saw her.

Silence for me has always felt like an impediment, but at that moment, it felt like it was the exact ammunition I needed and possessed.

I walked 3 miles back home that morning, not taking the bus like I always had before, but instead just walking and reliving every moment of her, then reliving them again, similar to unwrapping a gift, then wrapping it back up to unwrap it again, doing this over and over again.

Oddly enough, I do not remember the walk home and it seemed like I got to my destination quicker than if I had taken the bus.

Her name was Lisa, and it was the most wonderful name I had ever known in my life.

The hours ticked away slowly for me that night. 11:00 could not come soon enough. Every single thought of every minute was of Lisa, and I could not get her out of my mind, nor did I want to.

In my quiet world, there were explosions of sound I had never heard before, and it almost seemed like I could hear music, keeping me up most of the night.

I arrived first at Marlowe’s, as it would have been rude for her to arrive first and wait for me. I chose Marlowe’s specifically because I knew they served a French chocolate cake made at La Francais in Boulder that was absolutely divine, and it would be a feather in my cap if she liked chocolate cake.

When she walked up to the streetside table I had reserved, my breath was taken away. Her mime makeup was all gone and revealed the most beautiful face I had ever seen in my 31 years.

After saying hello to each other, I waited for her to sit down in the chair I had pulled from the table, then scooted her in just a bit, then sat down myself.

Our hands were flying at breakneck speed, trying to get the words out that we wanted to say to each other, and it was apparent to me that Lisa was interested in me the same way I was interested in her.

Fortunately, she loved chocolate cake, and ordered that with the house coffee, where I am more partial to carrot cake, and ordered that with the house coffee as well.

Watching her eat her cake was like watching it in slow motion, and it made me want to be the cake she was eating. I wanted to be inside of her, be a part of her chemistry, be as close as I could possibly be.

We talked all afternoon, and she told me how she teaches at the Institute for the Deaf and Blind, how she grew up in Denver, her favorite colors, books she had read, and her cats. She loved her cats, and I grew to love them too.

She also told me how she began to mime, that it helped her to make sense of a world she never really felt a part of.

I told her of my interest in the history of mankind, that I was a student of man’s religions, and my work at The Museum of Natural History.

After hours at that table, we settled up and began walking down the mall, talking nonstop and always looking at each other, which is natural for people like us without the benefit of sound, or in our case, the distraction of sound.

The thing that drew me in to her, more than anything else, was the way she held eye contact with me, and that is how I fell in love with her that afternoon.

We continued to see each other, at first a couple times a week, then every other day, then it became every day, and then I asked her to marry me, and without any hesitation whatsoever, she said yes, as if she were going to ask me if I didn’t hurry up and ask her first.

Our wedding was fairly well attended, as there were many of her students and faculty from the institute, along with employees of the museum.

Her parents were both there, along with her sister and brother. My parents had both been deceased since I was a teenager, so they were not in attendance, but my baby brother Edward from Chicago was there, and he could not have been happier, as was everyone that we knew.

The love I have for Lisa cannot be measured in any form or described in words. Truth be told, I think I fell in love with her within 2 minutes of seeing her for the first time, and it grew deeper with each passing day.

Last year she began complaining of headaches, small at first, but gradually progressed to head splitters that would last for hours.

After many tests, x rays, cat scans, and MRI’s, an aggressive brain tumor was found at the base of her medulla oblongata, and because of its location, it was inoperable.

Lisa was given 3 months to live, and she almost made it that far.

This morning, my beautiful Lisa passed away into the arms of the angels that brought her here, and now my life has lost its meaning.

The wonderful silence that we shared is now a dungeon of loneliness only inhabited by me.

Once again, I am all alone and I don’t know how I’m supposed to go on living without her. How can I wake up and not see her laying next to me, sometimes looking at me before my eyes even opened?

I pray for strength and the will to go on.

My memories of her will have to suffice the long journey I myself will have to make without her, until we are signing together again.