miki, felecia & darlene circa 1978, hampton institute

next stop heaven

i've been having trouble sleeping lately. i'm blaming it on residual jet lag, hormonal changes and general anxiety about the things in which i have no control over. so, when i can, i love to sleep late. the problem with doing so, however, is that sometimes you wake up to hours-old e-mail messages that needed immediate replies; or bad news that will ultimately ruin the few remaining hours of the day.

today was one of those days.

while i'm cognizant that i, more often than not, use this space to memorialize friends and loved ones, it has become increasingly obvious that these tributes will become a standing feature on this page . i'm at that age where the unpleasantries of life--such as death--are happening far more frequently. today's news: my friend, former roommate and consummate life adviser felecia (fu) kurtz gillis, died last saturday. a mutual friend of ours from college informed me via e-mail this morning. the subject line read: "guest book for felecia k. gillis."

i wasn't sure what to expect when i opened the message. i know what "guest books" are and have even signed a few. but, i was pretty sure it wasn't time to sign fu's. i thought maybe someone was honoring her.

sadly, i was mistaken. even though i was still in a post-tylenol pm daze, the text was very clear. fu, my friend with the gap-toothed smile and tilted eyes, was gone.

when i say that fu taught me more about love, compassion, forgiveness and men than any other human being on the planet, i'm not at all exaggerating. when we met as coeds sharing the same house at hampton institute back in the '70s, i was young impressionable and very suburban. fu, who was a year ahead of me, was a true southerner who would give you $2 if you asked for one. and, to me, was wise beyond her years. she always had all the answers to my endless stream of questions. we'd spend hours in her room just chatting about everything.

i often referred to her as my "first" girlfriend because i experienced so many firsts with her.

bored with the small selection of available and good men on a campus in which women outnumbered the fellas 8-to-1, fu and another friend escorted me on my first trip ever to a military base. they taught me how to pick up sailors on hampton boulevard in norfolk who were on their way back to the base. in exchange for a ride back to the ship we'd make them buy us dinner at denny's or sambo's. when we'd drop them off, i was often kicked to the curb because i was always far more interested in exploring the massive aircraft carriers than engaging in a one-night stand.

i also shared my first apartment with fu. she had recently graduated and was working in hampton and i decided to hang out there for the summer. we were doing the "three's company" thing with a guy named steve. it was a great summer. we hit the beach, her hometown of raleigh, n.c. and, yes, the naval base!

fu's job didn't last long and she eventually returned home. i was all caught up in the bittersweet splendor of being a college senior and we didn't stay in touch as often. In 1982, however, when i was in grad school in boston, fu was living in new york and we communicated more frequently. in 1984, at my wit's end as to what to do with the rest of my young life, i rang her and asked: "can i come stay with you in new york for two weeks so i can look for a job?" her response was an enthusiastic "why are you even asking me that? sure you can!"

then came another first.

fu already had a roommate, edith, a friend from church who had gotten evicted from her flat. i had just come from a situation with a really bad roommate, but living with the two of them was really fun. after finding a job my first week in new york, i ended up staying in fu's one-room, one-bath flat for the next six months rent-free. the only stipulation was that i had to go to church.

having been reared in the southern baptist church, that's what i knew and that's what i liked. but at that time i hadn't been a "regular" for years and certainly wasn't into this sort of new wave, born-again restrictive religion that they'd latched on to. plus, i'd never ever attended church in anything other than a church and they attended services in a brooklyn high school auditorium.

i hated everything about it. but even though it would be years before my spiritual transformation from fulltime to parttime sinner--i managed to learn a thing or two.

after six months of dodging each other in the loo and taking two-minute showers so that the next person could have some hot water to wash away the night's scum, edith and i left the nest. she moved back to brooklyn, but i moved into the next building. that's when it all changed. fu had started dating a recovering drug addict and despite my often less-than-best efforts, he and i couldn't get along. it got to the point where she had to choose and she rightfully chose the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

although fu and i stopped speaking to each other i never really felt that our friendship was over for life. our divorce was not really steeped in animosity. rather, it was all about the inability and/or unwillingness of immature people to work out viable solutions to their immature issues. once i left new york, i never attempted to reach out to fu and vice-versa. i heard through the vine that she and roy had married and that she'd moved back to raleigh. i also heard that roy had died and that she had given birth to two daughters.

in 2007, i was sent to raleigh to interview cullen jones for a show i was working on. prior to my trip i had contacted our mutual friend from college who very graciously organized a small dinner party that included other hampton alums including fu. it had been more than 20 years since i'd last seen or spoken to fu and i was understandably anxious. but when she walked into the restaurant we enjoyed a long embrace.

like me, she had locs and hadn't really aged a bit. we did the speed-date catch-up, exchanged numbers and e-mails. she told me that roy had seen me on tv one night and called her into the room. "and then he died," she said while bursting out in giggles.

i wasn't quite sure of what to make of that.

that night i e-mailed her, saying how good it was to see her. she replied the next day with a similar note. enough time had passed to eliminate the pain of what had gone down in new york, but we were also different people who had essentially grown apart. i think we both knew that we'd never become best friends again but it was comforting knowing that we were at least reconnected.

that would be the last time i'd ever see her.

about a month ago, however, i was surprised to get an e-mail from her. it was actually a form letter announcing her sister's new book. i wrote back offering my congratulations to her sister and added that i hoped things were well. she responded by asking how things were in my world. about a week later instead of writing i rang her up. it was way too much drama to record in an e-mail. you could tell it had been a long time since she'd heard my voice because when i said "hey," she asked me if i had gotten married over the weekend.

nope, that was some other friend.

for the next 20 minutes we talked at length about life. i was saddened to learn that both of her parents, whom i had been very fond of, had passed away. and we laughed about her kids and all their young adult drama. her oldest daughter had just told her she had planned on living with her boyfriend and fu was trying to wrap her head around why her baby thought it was OK to tell her that!

hysterical.

that was the last time i heard her voice.

in the next few days i will try to fully comprehend the enormity of a loss that has yet to really hit me. i won't think about all the wasted years because they really don't matter. looking back, i'm not sure there would have been many more phone calls, visits or e-mail updates regardless of what went down in new york 25 years ago. all i know now is that fu always brought out the best in me, and that we will somehow always be connected.

my true comfort, however, comes in knowing that she's in a place where she always wanted to be.