Jennifer

It was October 7th, 1990.  I had been off on maternity leave for almost 4 months and was celebrating Thanksgiving that weekend at my home with Courtney and her dad, Jerry. 

Let me give you a little history here first.  I worked for Ontario Hydro at this time in my life and had been there about five years.  Over that period of time I had made many friends.  One of my best friends there was Jennifer Milando.  She was a beautiful young woman with a huge heart and a wild spirit.  I remember one of the first things that caught my attention about her was her eyes.  She had these eyes like no other person I had ever met.  There were almost white/blue   similar to a husky dog or malamute s eyes.  She was a very special person.

She delivered the mail at Ontario Hydro downtown and I worked in the records department.  She liked to laugh, party and have fun and that was right up my alley so we were kindred spirits from the start.  She had her struggles and I had mine.  We helped each other through a lot of bad times and celebrated a lot of good times.  There was never any judgements between us and we shared a very deep and connecting friendship.
In the summer of 1989 one of our close and very dear friends died suddenly at the young age of 39.  It shook our social group’s foundation and we all never truly recovered.  Shortly after that, I found out I was expecting my first child and subsequently went off on maternity leave in July of 1990. 

Jennifer had met a new guy and she seemed pretty serious about him.  I was happy for her but had heard a lot of rumours about drugs and out of control partying.  Now that my partying days had ceased to exist, it was easy for me to see her wild side was concerning.  I approached her about it, but she assured me everything was really good for her.  I was worried as she had struggled with additions before   but she told me all was fine so I believed her.

On Sunday October 7th after I had finished with my Thanksgiving dinner and clean up, I excused myself to the  ladies room .  After washing my hands, I looked up from the sink and there was Jennifer staring at me in the bathroom mirror!!  It startled me like nothing I had ever felt before and when I turned to see if she was really standing beside me   there was nothing there.  I must have stood there for a few minutes and then went to the livingroom and told Jerry what had just happened.  He pretty much laughed off as some imaginary delusion.

As fate would have it, I went to work on that Tuesday (following the Holiday Monday) to take my new beautiful baby girl into visit all of my coworkers.  I had only had the chance to walk through the door, when my supervisor pulled me aside to offer her condolences about Jennifer.  I was shocked and blindsided   as I had not heard the news yet.

Jennifer had been found dead, in the back of a van in downtown Toronto from an apparent drug overdose on Sunday October 7th.
I have always struggled to accept that Jennifer was gone, however, I was ever so grateful for her to visit me on her way out of this place.  There were plenty more people on this earth she could have connected with, but she chose me and in doing so, planted a deep belief within me that there is much more to this existence then we are led to believe.  Jennifer Milando was my close dear friend and one of my first real teachers.