Zombie Girl
Today I want to introduce you to an old friend, Mike Finley. Mike and I go way back, but the most important association is that for a stretch of years we were neighbors, and his daughter, Daniele, and my daughter, Nica, were inseparable.
Daniele is the one on left. Just look at that impish smile. Daniele was a natural-born ringleader. One day last summer Nica and I were sitting out on the deck, having a cold beer and talking about the old neighborhood, and Nica said, "Dad? How come all of my stories about Daniele end with, '...and we made such a mess, and Mom got so mad!'?"
For a time, Daniele was as likely to be at our house as Nica was to be at theirs. Emily used to baby-sit them both. But everything changes, eventually, and in time the Finley-Frazins moved one way and we moved another. Nica and Daniele stayed in touch for a few years, but slowly drifted apart until the wisp of contact was gone.
Daniele was always the instigator; the mover and shaker; the sparkplug and the one in charge. As a young adult she developed a chronic, painful, and ultimately debilitating medical condition, and when the surgery to correct it failed, she apparently decided to take charge one more time. On Tuesday, August 18, 2009, after putting her affairs in order, seeing or otherwise contacting many of her friends, going to a concert, and calling her father, she went back to her apartment, and downed a lethal combination of prescription medications and alcohol.
People react to tragedy in many wildly different ways. I am dealing with my grief for Emily by shutting out the outside world and focusing on my family. Mike and Rachel reacted to Daniele's suicide by creating The Daniele Frazin Finley Foundation, dedicated to suicide prevention. To raise money for the foundation, Mike wrote a graphic novella, Zombie Girl.
And that is why I've added Zombie Girl to the Department of Gratuitous Plugs in the right column. No, it's not a comic strip, and no, I'm still refusing to take paid advertising on this site. I will use the Department of Gratuitous Plugs to support the causes and people I believe in, and while I still don't seem to be able to do much to help Mike and Rachel, this is at least something.
Let's talk.
FAMILY MATTERS posts at 7 a.m. each Sunday and is dedicated to serious discussions of marriage, family, children, human sexuality, and all the other things that writers ignore when they cocoon in their offices and try to create fiction. This series will run until we either run out of things to talk about, solve all the problems in the world, or you tell me to shut up and go get some professional therapy. If you have a question you'd like to ask or a topic you'd like to expound upon, send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com and we'll work it into the queue.
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