I was working in my office this morning with the TV on as background noise.  MSNBC did a story about the reunion show of “Real Housewives of New Jersey”.  The scenes that followed were disturbing and insane.  Grown women were screaming at each other, calling one another “garbage”, and had to be physically restrained lest they scratch out one another’s eyes or pull each other’s hair. 

A stark contrast to the scene I witnessed last night, a scene so moving, so heart breaking, so precious it warmed my heart and broke it at the same time. 

A long-term client of mine, a fine man with two small girls, had been swallowed up by a black cloud of depression, a depression unlike anything I’ve witnessed.  Up until about eight months ago, he was faithful in coming to my office every week and I can only say that this took great effort and courage on his part.  He was working in conjunction with a psychiatrist, trying to loosen the tenacious and unyielding grip of The Depression that had rendered his life stalled and stuck. 

If you’ve ever been in the company of someone in deep depression, you’ll probably know what I mean when I say that in my office, there wasn’t just my client but the heavy dark stifling presence of the deep and powerful Darkness of Depression.

Last week, the Darkness finally had its way.  It was a system too big for my dear client who struggled so valiantly for three years to beat the black void of despair and hopelessness.  He took his life and left behind his two fairy children, little girls only five and seven years old.

Please don’t judge this man in any way.  What I witnessed the past three years was equivalent to someone being in the end stages of cancer with no pain medication.  It was simply too big and too much for him.

I went to his memorial service last night.  There in the front of the church sitting with their mother were his two beautiful daughters, dressed in bright clothes with colorful ribbons in their hair.  His 7 year old was solemn but determined.  His 5 year old wore a grin so wide it made us all cry and laugh at the same time.

His 7 year old got up to speak.  “I love my Dad.  He was the perfect Dad.  He made me laugh and he taught me how to take care of our dogs and told us stories."  Her young voice trembled, "I know he had to go but I will cry myself to sleep for a long long time, probably forever.”

There wasn’t a dry eye anywhere.  It was touching and it was brutal.

After she spoke, she came and sat in the pew right in front of me, wedged in between her two best girlfriends.  Three little girls huddled together in camaraderie and support.  I watched each of her friends stroke her hair and gaze into her eyes with vats of compassion.  At one point, the suddenly fatherless girl spread her arms in either direction and wrapped them around each of her friends’ shoulders.  They both leaned into her, resting their heads on her. 

I had forgotten how wise, unfiltered and loving little girls are…long before they grow up and are exposed to a culture that glamorizes the competition, the cattiness, and the pettiness that some infantile grown women display.

I have women friends like those three little girls.  I have traveled many roads with them, some happy and some sad.  And I couldn’t have made the journeys without them; so sweet, consistent and strong their loving support has been.

Some women spend a lifetime looking for their “soul mate”.  They need only to look around them, into the eyes of the women that love them, who are there for them no matter what.  Many a wise woman has found her soul mate in her closest of girlfriends. 

I wish the “real housewives” could have seen these three girls last night.  They might have learned a thing or two about what it really means to be a “grown up”.