In 2018, I got off of Facebook for mental health reasons, and it worked! Unfortunately, I have missed some major life events in the lives of people I consider dear friends. I'm going to tell you about two of these people.
Sondra, Jude, and I met (along with others like Jennifer, Jade, Amy, Stacy, Liz, Angela, April, and Aura) on a Yahoo! Groups page dedicated to Rockapella in the late 1990s. I have SO MANY stories I could tell you about the Rockapella days, but we're going to stay on track here, starting with Sondra.
Sondra lived in the midwest and had been in a small orbit of the town she grew up in her whole life. She was several years older than I was (I remember feeling weird when she turned 40 as I was still freshly into my 30s), and had worked at a big box retailer her whole adult life. She lived in an apartment over a convenience store, that also had a view of a major waterway.
Sondra was a photographer and loved doing portraits and candid shots of friends and family. She would also capture unusual boats coming down the river by her apartment. She had an old cat she loved very much.
Her family had been through a lot, including the death of her mother when she was young, and the loss of a house to a fire before she lived independently. She adored her father, and was close to her sisters and their families. She loved kids so much, though she never had any herself.
At some point during my late 20s, Rockapella was coming through Las Vegas, where I lived at the time. A lot of people I'd only met online were coming into town to see them, but Sondra couldn't because she didn't have the money. I knew that not having money was a recurring theme in her life.
We didn't have a lot of money, but this was pre-kids, so I figured that I could swing the airfare and get her a ticket when I bought mine. I floated the idea, and she thought about it. She'd never been on a plane, much less traveled that far from home and alone.
After talking to her family, who discouraged Sondra from visiting me because I might be a man and regardless would probably kill her and bury her in my back yard (remember, this was before it was normalized to try to meet people you'd only interacted with online), Sondra decided to come out!
We had a great time! I think my ex-husband didn't want to deal with anything remotely related to Rockapella, so he left town for a few days (I had and still have no idea where he went, and honestly couldn't be bothered to think about it at all). I had just found out I was pregnant, and was a little nauseated and sleepy most of the time, but we went to the Fremont Street Experience (when it was new), bummed around on The Strip, spent time with my family (she was enamored with my niece Hannah), and chatted a lot.
I did not kill her nor did I bury her (alive or otherwise) in the back yard.
Several times during the week, she "spoke" online with the aforementioned Jude, another Rockapella fan she'd started to kind of long-distance date. They were super cute, but I also remember one night being just beat and ill and lying on the couch, grateful that she had something besides me to occupy her. But she was having so much fun chatting that she kept yelling to keep me apprised of their back-and-forth.
Sondra and Jude had a lot in common. Although they were only a few years older than I am, they were both old souls. They loved Lucy and other contemporary television series. I guess an acapella vocal band is kind of old-school. But they were both sort of unimpressed with more modern entertainment, and really bonded over nostalgia.
So... I thought it might be neat to post the one picture I have that Sondra took of her and me at Red Rock Canyon, and I don't have it anymore. Not to go on too bleak of a tangent, but I'm not kidding when I say that my ex-husband hated anything to do with Rockapella. At some point, I think I got rid of anything remotely related to that in order to try to "save" a marriage that was never going to be fixed.
After the concert and meeting so many new faces who would go on to be long-term friends, Sondra flew back home. That trip gave her the confidence to make plans to go see Jude in person. They saved up for a long time. She worked in retail, and he worked at a local grocery store.
Jude lived in Louisiana. I probably got to know him better than I would have otherwise because of our mutual friendship with Sondra. He was a little sillier and more light-hearted than she was, though he'd certainly seen his fair share of adversity. One of his two brothers had died pretty young. Like Sondra, he had grown up and remained working-class.
I do have pictures of both of them, from a cheesy pre-Photoshop (to me, anyway; apparently PS was already 13 years old at this point) thing I made to hype Sondra up for her trip. I scoured the internet for pictures of them separately and did... well, this monstrosity.
Over the years, Sondra visited Jude a few times and he might have gone to see her once. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but they eventually split up and it came out that Jude was gay. When we spoke, he insisted that he'd told Sondra "exactly what I am" from the beginning and either she didn't fully believe him, or thought love could "fix" things.
Jude and I actually got closer after this, because at least one member of Sondra's family had reached out to him and been very accusatory and chastising. She told Jude that he was bad to break Sondra's heart and that he needed to change his ways or he'd end up in hell.
First, I thought Jude was a stand-up guy and I liked him. Second, I unknowingly dated 2 gay guys in high school, and I could totally empathize with him in a way that I wish I'd had my "gaydar" up and could have empathized with the young men I dated. But it made sense: Sondra was a woman, like me, whose femininity isn't performed over the top. And having a long-distance girlfriend/fiance is very comfortable for a man who cannot, for whatever myriad of reasons, live a fully authentic life.
I knew that Jude had loved Sondra in his way (the same way I think the guys I dated cared about me and had no intention of hurting me). And I knew that he didn't deserve to be attacked or condemned by someone who had maybe only ever met him one time.
As time passed, of course our Yahoo! Group slowed and shut down. Everyone was on Facebook, so that's where we kept up with each other. Less frequently, of course, as we all matured and had busier IRLs.
One day, Sondra was at work and this guy she'd gone to high school with turned up. He was expressly looking for her (they were both well into their 40s at this point). He told her that he'd had a crush on her and very quickly asked her to marry him.
He was a kind and generous guy who ended up telling her that she could quit the retail job she had hated for three decades to concentrate on her photography. They still lived in her little apartment over the store, and they seemed very happy.
One thing I noticed about Sondra, though, was her predisposition to kind of having a "Debbie Downer" way about her. Maybe she always did, but as I loosened up, I saw it more .There was a time or two she'd comment on something I put on Facebook and be negative about it in a way that got on my nerves. I sniped back a time or two, and we'd go for a while without communicating, but we were still always friendly.
Jude went on with his life and started to come out of the closet a bit, at least online and kind of away from his home circles. I never asked too much, but he seemed like he was happy enough, just that he wished he could find someone for a real relationship instead of someone who was just looking to use for whatever.
After 2018, I pretty much lost touch with both of them. I do sometimes check in on old friends to see what I can see from their public profiles. In 2023, I sadly put together that Sondra had been in treatment for cancer during the second half of 2022. She had posted something like, "I am hopefully going home tomorrow. I miss my cat! It's going to be hard learning how to live with diabetes and heart disease alone with the cancer, but I'm taking one day at a time."
She never made it home.
I scrolled through hers and her husband's profiles. It looks like she'd had a great support system, with the volunteer fire department holding a benefit to raise money to help with her medical expenses. I am so sorry that she's gone. She was still in her 50s. I never met nor interacted with her husband, but I hope he continues to be happy and do well.
One of the last times I interacted with Jude, he was telling me that his phone had just died and he didn't have any money for a new one. That's how he was using apps to meet like-minded folks in the area, and it really cut him off from a social window that was hard to come by.
James had just upgraded his phone (which was rare; we don't usually get a new phone until an old one dies, but he'd done a lot of research on PlusOne and had to make the leap). so I asked Jude if he wanted James's old phone. We sent it to him and made sure he got it up and running. It never occurred to me to tell him to grab my phone number while he was setting it up.
We're going to Louisiana soon, and I thought it might be cool to finally put a face with the name and voice I have for Jude. I figured I could find him on FB and try to send him a message, but I was surprised with how many people have his name. I googled his name and city, and found... his obituary. He just died last year, from complications of diabetes. He was 55.
Aside from the normal sadness that comes with having friends die, I firmly believe that ZIP codes and household incomes growing up have a lot to do with the fact that I'm still alive and my friends are not That part makes me mad. I don't know what to do about that, so I'm just sitting with it for the moment.
I do take comfort in the fact that Jude, too, had a support system. There was a barbecue fundraiser for him a few years ago to help raise money for his medical expenses.
Both of my friends were well-loved.
Both of them had to raise funds for their medical care, though, which is extremely cruel and should offend anyone who believes that life is sacred,. Access to preventative and ongoing care should be a human right. If you don't believe that, then you are one of the reasons my friends are gone from this earth much too soon. They worked hard. They simply could not afford the care that they needed to ward off problems before they started, nor to combat disease once they were ill.
And so I remember them both with sadness that our system works like this, but with a heart full of beautiful, complicated memories. I'm better for having known both of them.
...
OH! And I just remembered: I don't think my ex-husband knew that Sondra never paid me back for that airline ticket. I lied out my ass about it, because it was one of my little rebellions. So if you are reading this, sir... well, I won't type it in case my mom comes across this post.
