By MARY JANE HOLT
Contributing Writer

I don't know if she's still alive as I write this.

Never even heard her name until last night. Had no idea who she was, where she was from, what her life has been like. But, yesterday, in a very small way, I shared what she was going through.

Life. It's strange, isn't it? The chords that tie total strangers together can fall from nowhere to wind knots never to be broken again.

It all started with a dream I had night before last. I was in a motel room with a sick friend and Lynda, my sister, unexpectedly opened the door and walked in.

I awoke and could not get the dream out of my mind.

By mid morning I put on the T. Graham Brown CD that I had recently purchased. I had been saying I was going to buy the CD for 12 years. Finally, a sense of urgency had gripped me earlier this week. I searched through Best Buy and Media Play until I found it.

Twelve years ago while standing by my dying father's bedside for a week at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, my sister and I heard that T. Graham Brown was in concert in town. We fantasized about leaving the hospital for just a few hours to go hear him. Of course we never left Daddy's side, but there was something about the fantasy that gave us relief. Go figure...

Anyway, I buy the CD this week. Finally. And yesterday I played it over and over and over while thoughts of the Tallahassee hospital and Lynda kept dancing in and out of my mind.

By 4 p.m. my anxiety level was almost through the roof. I knew I wasn't dealing with some strange kind of flashback. I had begun to fear for Lynda's welfare.

I called her office first. They just said she wasn't in. Between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. I called her car phone about 12 times, and called another sister, a brother and Lynda's husband more than once. Nobody I talked to knew where she was. They did not even seem concerned. All I could do was pray.

Shortly after 10 p.m. I became calm enough that I could lie down on my bed and rest. Sleep was out of the question, but I thought I could rest.

At 11:30 p.m. my phone rang. Lynda was calling from her car. That morning, she had insisted that a hotel clerk in Bainbridge let her into the room of a friend and business associate from out of town who had not shown up at the office on time. She had immediately taken the friend to a local hospital. Doctors at that hospital had called for emergency transport to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital where her life hangs in the balance at this writing because of a leaking aneurysm.

Why do I tell you this story?

Because I can never remind you often enough how short life can be. Because we must always be open to the many ways we (stranger and friend alike) are drawn to one another. And we must, absolutely must, be willing to bloom where we are planted. And you and I do not always control (if ever) where we may be planted and when we must bloom.

My sister has a very demanding job and she had a thousand things on her plate yesterday. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered except getting help for a friend. She could not even think of herself, her work, or her own family, until her friend's husband had arrived at the Florida hospital last night. Then, and only then, could she walk away from the situation.

And only then (around 10 p.m.) was I able to become calm, lie down and relax until she called. I knew she would call as soon as she got word I had been trying to reach her.

“Did you listen to your messages? Who told you I've been calling?” I asked.

“Nobody. I just knew I had to call you the minute I got to my phone. It's been locked in my car all day at the hotel, or I would have called you earlier so you could have been praying.”

Like I had not been all day...

Ah, yes, the ties that bind. A Henry County woman on a business trip to Bainbridge. My sister who tosses reason to the wind when her little voice (I think it's the same voice I listen to. Angels? The Holy Spirit? ESP?) tells her something is wrong with that woman. And I, totally uninformed, feeling all the turmoil and anxiety of the day, wanting to escape as I did 12 years ago, but praying instead, while listening to T. Graham Brown in the background.

Don't even try to figure it out. I gave up years ago. Just bloom. And pray..