RIP, Carol

My life changed for the better when the Brandeberry family moved from Omaha to Dallas in the summer of 1969. The oldest of its three children was a girl named Carol. She enrolled at Bryan Adams High School, and her locker had by the luck of the draw been placed close to mine. As a result, we saw each other often. Carol was surprisingly forward about wanting to be friends and then more. After six weeks, this blond-haired beauty (albeit somewhat on the heavy side) was my GF. I felt blessed.

I treasure the teenage emotion and—I’ll be candid—passion we shared. Smooching in the front seat of my Buick at Marsalis Zoo and White Rock Lake, Lord have mercy! We went to the BA green and white football game, we watched the Beatles documentary Let It Be, she cooked me a meal at her home, and I drove her to Love Field one night just to watch the airplanes take off and land. I also recall one Saturday morning when the aforesaid automobile got stuck in a muddy parking lot at Norbuck. We had slime up to our knees by the time our escape had been made, and oh did we laugh!

An aspiring nurse, Carol helped out at Presbyterian Hospital in June 1970 when I underwent a spinal fusion. She was among the people who gently turned me over three times a day, kept me clean and even fed me. Such an experience gave us a deep bond, or so I thought. Our sweet romance ended all too soon. Carol’s next-door neighbor, Boyd London, was a year older than us and bound for Texas A&M. She fancied him and started making snarky comments about “t.u.” and how she thought orange was a disgusting color. There was a parting of the ways as she and Boyd became a pair; I did the same with Debbie Hart. Boyd went to College Station, I went to UT, Carol went to Texas Woman’s University in Denton, and Debbie went to Tyler Junior College.

More than four decades elapsed. I have to thank Facebook for facilitating our re-connection. That led to intermittent e-mail exchanges. Carol’s lively and emotional ways had not changed. She wrote a number of long and revealing letters, the essence of which was as follows. She’d been married to a guy named Bob, had three kids and then divorced, leading to a harsh custody battle. Other than Bob, Carol had an extended family, and apparently a happy one. Although she refused to hide her problems from me or complain, she did state facts: Her radiant blond hair had turned silver, she was overweight (“morbidly obese,” as she described herself), and she had bipolar syndrome and a litany of physical woes. They included fibromyalgia, diabetes type 2, obstructive sleep apnea, degenerative disc disease, restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, spinal stenosis, arthritis, high blood pressure and cancer. Subject to suicidal ideations, her mental illness led to revocation of her nursing license, and how sad that must have been to a woman who had always wanted to be a nurse. Divorced, unemployable and disabled, she had to live in government housing.

Yet another matter must be addressed. Carol informed me that not long after her divorce she realized she was attracted to other women. Yes, I refer to the L word. I have to admit, this really threw me for a loop because she had been a rather libidinous heterosexual during our high school days. I accepted her as she was, saying what I have said numerous times before—if I were gay, I would not hide in the closet. The point is moot, of course. Carol mentioned a woman named Mary with whom she had a long on-and-off relationship. Why shouldn’t they be happy?

I had a Texas visit set for the summer of 2014 and wanted to see her. She said yes, and then no. Insecure and fearful that I would find her unappealing, she wavered. I assured her there was nothing to worry about. I came to her Oak Cliff home, Tyler Street Tower, on a hot day and picked her up. Carol moved slowly, with the aid of a walker. We went to Norma’s Café a few blocks away and shared an old-fashioned Texas meal. I would characterize her as being a bit erratic and yet still quite intelligent. Despite numerous hardships, she had lost none of the zest she’d had as a BA student. Then, and in a second visit in 2016, I gave her $100 and asked her not to make a big deal of it.

Carol’s health only got worse. The cancer—I cannot remember the variety—was beaten into remission and then came back, and she had many visits to the emergency room. For some reason, in 2017 she and Mary moved to Vernon, a town of 11,000 up near the Red River. This, I realized, meant I would probably not see her again, as my bi-annual trips to Texas are packed with people to meet and things to do in a limited amount of time.

I worried as months passed and I got no word from her. E-mails went unanswered. Same with a letter posted to her address in Vernon. It had gone 6,800 miles there and 6,800 back, as I found it in my mail box three days ago. Scrawled in the bottom right corner was the word “deceased.” I lost no time in going to Google to investigate. The Sullivan Funeral Home in Vernon confirmed that my high school sweetheart had succumbed to nature’s demands on October 11, 2018. Her daughter’s Facebook postings indicated that Carol had been moved to hospice care not too long before, that she had experienced kidney failure and that the doctor said her body was “worn out.”

I looked closely at every photo on her Facebook page. There were a lot of them, and she was seldom alone. Carol had friends, not to mention her two brothers, three sons and daughters, and more nephews, nieces and grandkids than I could shake a stick at (an idiom meaning “abundance” and “plenty”). It would be condescending to say I felt sorry for her, so I will not. However, I am certain that Carol Brandeberry was well loved.