On the way to a friend’s house recently, my husband turned left, right into a bush. Maine country roads at night are, by nature, dark. Add fog to the mix and it’s one big blur. You might as well be in Massachusetts. Or Texas.

Years ago, when oncoming headlights first impacted my vision, my friend Helen said to me, “Look at the white line. Keep your eyes on the white line.” So instead of allowing myself to be caught up in headlights, I began focusing on the white stripe along the road’s edge; that is, if the white stripe was there. Maine roads don’t necessarily get the attention they need. If you’ve experienced a frost heave, or one of those big potholes, you know what I mean.

Helen is gone now, but her words have have stayed with me, like lyrics to a favorite song. When it’s dark and rainy, low lying roads shrouded in fog, I picture Helen in the back seat, quietly chuckling as her friend Sharon, not yet used to the dark contours of Maine weather, peers with trepidation past the headlights and lack of landmarks, trying to rely on a stripe for orientation, for illumination, for safety.

Darkness, in a sense, seems to have descended upon us as a nation, divided by politics, racial animus, by the amount of money in our pockets. On the day of his impeachment, the current U.S. president mocked a recently widowed congresswoman, joking that her late husband was in hell. Following their leader, the people standing behind him tittered, oblivious to the woman’s pain, her humanity.

What would Helen say, I wonder. “Oh, I don’t know about that Trump fella,” I imagine her saying, adding with a laugh, “He’s a scamp.” She tended toward understatement. Times like this I realize how much I miss her. At 89 years of age, she enjoyed life as much as anyone. She was chatty, quirky and curious, unwilling to sit on life’s sidelines. Even a serious medical condition could not keep her down. Nothing kept her from tending the garden, volunteering at the historical society, reading decades-old newspapers and cutting out articles for her friends, or inviting me over for a cup of tea. She kept my favorite brand in her cupboard.

A few days before she died, felled by a stroke that came out of nowhere, I went to see her at a hospice facility miles from our little town. She was in bed in a dimly lit room, her eyes closed, a few family members clustered nearby. I came close, bent down, cupped her small hand, felt its warmth. Before leaving I told her I loved her.

That day, I had no problem finding my way home. We can’t always know where we’re going, or even if we will arrive. But if we have friends who point out the value of white lines, whose friendship provides us with light on our darkest days, we’re halfway there.


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