Teresa was a beautiful little girl, with dark black hair cut in a pageboy. She was a very light skinned Hispanic, but that meant nothing to me then. We were eight years old. We'd been friends since first grade and had grown closer after my best friend Cindy died of leukemia.
I remember playing on the monkey bars with Teresa and thinking that she really should wear shorts under her dress so no one could see her underpants. (We all had to wear dresses to school back then). I even remember telling my mommy that I saw Teresa's underpants.
I don't have even a hint of a memory of being told that Teresa was dead. I remember the facts, though. She was playing in her front yard and had run out into the street after her ball, from between two parked cars. The car that hit her was going fast for a shaded suburban street, especially in the 1960s era when children spent all their play time outside. When the car hit her, Teresa was thrown into the air and landed on her head about twenty yards down the street. She died instantly.
I do remember some hushed talk at my house, which was unusual. Then my mother took me to the funeral home one evening for Teresa's visitation. I remember every detail of that. (My mother hadn't taken me to see Cindy).
The room was narrow and it was lit with candles. The casket at the front was very small, and it was white with a satin cushioned interior. The opened portion of the casket was to my left as I walked slowly forward, my mother holding my hand. Teresa was wearing a frilly pink dress and on her head was a white doily. In her white-gloved hands she held a small white Bible and a string of beads with a strange-looking cross on it.
I silently cried and cried. I had never seen a dead person before. And Teresa didn't look asleep, like my parents had said she would. She looked gone.
After spending a few moments looking down at my friend, my mother pulled me back a little so others could approach. And then I stared at Teresa. She was breathing! I could see her breathing! This was all just a terrible mistake; I didn't know why she looked gone, but she had to be alive because she was breathing!
I got an idea. I took in the biggest, fullest breath I could, and I held it. I studied Teresa. She wasn't breathing. I gasped out the breath and tried the experiment again. When I was holding my own breath, Teresa wasn't breathing. Teresa was really dead. She was really gone, just like she looked.
In front of Teresa's casket was a satin padded kneeling bench, and women dressed in black kept kneeling to pray, all of them holding variations of the same beads that Teresa was holding. The beads had crosses on them, but Jesus was on the cross. That didn't make sense to me. I had asked Jesus into my heart at the age of four, and I knew that a critical aspect of salvation was believing that Jesus rose from the dead. Why would these people be holding necklaces with Jesus still on the cross?
I could hear some of the women praying for Teresa's soul, praying she'd be accepted into Heaven. Now I was really confused. A person accepted Jesus into their heart when they were alive, so they would go to Heaven when they died. But Teresa was already dead. If she hadn't accepted Jesus when she was alive, it was too late now.
I tearfully and quietly asked my mother a few questions, and she explained that Teresa and her family were Catholics and believed differently than we did. She briefly told me about rosaries and about purgatory. The rosaries made sense to me. Purgatory didn't.
When we got home, I have a vague memory of talking with my parents about how the beliefs of Catholics differed from ours. I remember telling my parents about how I tested whether or not Teresa was breathing. And I remember my mother saying, "I knew I never should have taken you there."
About six years ago, not long before my mother died, I talked to her about Teresa's visitation, and about her comment that she never should have taken me. She remembered that night, and she remembered her comment. My mother told me that she hadn't realized that I would be so upset, and she hadn't realized that I would absorb the Catholic rituals and become so confused.
I'm 51 years old now, and I have long since adopted my own religious beliefs, most of which are still based on that early training. I use prayer beads, although not in the same way that Catholics do. And my beads have an empty cross, because Jesus hasn't been on the cross for almost 2000 years.
And I have to say, praying for the soul of someone who is already dead still makes no sense to me. God gives us a choice, and we have to make that choice for ourselves; once we die, no one can make that choice for us, no one can pray us into Heaven.
So I don't know where you are, dear Teresa, but I remember you.
