Can't Keep A Good Woman Down

After six months in our new Pennsylvania home, the holidays were approaching and I was terribly homesick. As a tongue-in-cheek joke that I hoped someone would take seriously, I asked my friends, via social media, who wanted to come over for Christmas baking.

I shouldn't have been surprised when Vanessa asked me when. She's almost always ready to bake.

But I was surprised. Just weeks earlier, I'd spoken to her while she wept, inconsolably. I could hear her gasping for breath and knew she almost wished it wouldn't come. Her baby, less than five months, was dead. How do you even comfort someone when that happens?

I was also ashamed.

Here I was feeling sorry for myself because my closest friends were 900 miles away and she was humoring me by offering to come visit.

So I took her up on it, realizing it might be the right thing for both of us.

Vanessa is no stranger to pain. Her mother battled cancer off and on while Vanesssa was in high school and again just after she graduated from college.

She moved up her wedding date to make sure her mother could be there to see her get married. Her mother didn't last another year and Vanessa, in her early 20s, had to say goodbye.

Now, just a few years after losing her mother, she lost her son.

And you'd think nothing could be worse than losing a child, but there was: The Department of Children and Family Services was investigating Westley's death. So while Vanessa was breaking apart at the loss of her child, a police investigator asked her why she would protect her husband who had killed their child.

He hadn't. The autopsy showed Westley asphyxiated on vomit, even though Vanessa and her husband were doing everything right. He was sleeping in the middle of his mattress, on his back, as recommend. It was a horrible freak accident.

But in the middle of her grief, her older child, her daughter had to stay with relatives and her husband was being accused of abusing their deceased son. The investigation took weeks, invading their grief.

So when Vanessa volunteered to come visit me, ostensibly for holiday baking, I begged her to come and promised to have plenty of wine.

We didn't actually bake during that visit. Instead we drank too much wine and visited local holiday markets to help bring just a bit of Christmas cheer. She talked even then, mid-investigation, about how much she needed to get things back to normal for her daughter.

She even managed, once or twice, to smile.

Vanessa's got a wicked sense of humor and if you don't know her, you might even think she's a bit crass. Her humor and stories from work, she's a medical professional, are often not safe for the dinner table.

I can't remember how many stories I've heard that begin with, "I saw the grosses thing today."

But once you get to know her, it's clear that her stories are part of her defense, the way she survives being the most badass woman I know.

Within a year of her mother's death, she and her husband discovered that he had a degenerative autoimmune disease. They treat it with diet and good medical science, but it's another strain she bears with a smile.

As a child, she had always said she was going to buy her parents' house when she grew up. The house is something of a family legacy, built by her grandfather.

When her mother died, her father couldn't bear to live there anymore and wanted to sell it almost immediately. Newlywed and just barely starting her career, Vanessa lived up to her childhood vow and bought the house. In the decade since, she's had to put a new roof on it, reseal the basement and replace the sump pump, and hundreds of other homeowner nightmares, but she keeps going.

She's putting her husband through college and moved his father into their home after her mother-in-law died unexpectedly. When he followed just a few weeks later, she handled it, despite only being married into the family. She's fighting like a tiger to protect her husband's inheritance after his siblings convinced his father to change his will days before he died.

And while she does all that, she works 50 hours a week and still manages to get her daughter to dance classes. She's ferocious and tough and somehow bears it all with an infectious grin.

This is my letter to her, my dear friend that life simply cannot keep down.

Dear Vanessa,

Did I ever tell you that when my brother was born, I told my mother to take him back and get me a sister?

She never did.

I was in my thirties before I finally found my little sister -- you. I want to thank you for the privilege of being an honorary aunt to your wonderful children and for all the times you made me smile.

Thank you for sharing your grief and triumphs with me. You are the strongest woman I know. I am so lucky to be a part of your life.

For International Women's Month, I wanted you to know how much you mean to me. I see the strength it takes to get up and smile and I see you do it, without fail.

Love always,

Cin