The above photo was taken outside the entrance to our childhood church in Georgia. This was three years before I was even born, around the late fifties. Both my parents are on the third row from the top, on the right side, next to the lady holding a baby in a bonnet.
That baby in the bonnet suddenly passed away last week.
I've known her for as long as I can remember, and will miss her the same.
As long as I'll be able to remember.
Once all of us were out of high school, we drifted apart but stayed in touch over the years just like most of people my age always have.
Class reunions, church homecomings and finally, more funerals than parties.
Not too long ago, she lost her partner of well over thirty years to a nasty battle with brain cancer.
It broke my friend, and my own heart broke for her.
I had attended a Halloween party at their house a few years back with my sister and it was literally us picking up exactly where we left off all those many years ago.
I got a postcard (from the mid seventies) and this note from her just last week...
I've always loved her handwriting, and way with few words.
Every summer we went on vacation to Panama City with our parents and about four other families from the church. We all stayed at the same place and was usually a group of about fifteen to twenty.
What a terrific childhood and adolescence I was lucky enough to have growing up, with outstanding parents God picked just for me.
And bonus points, all those same families spent one weekend together every Fall in the great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, all in the same huge house.
This is a picture of that very house, my friend mailed me as well.
I immediately framed it.
It sits on the marble wash stand where I keep my car keys. I see it every single time I walk into my kitchen, leave my house, or come home to it.
After losing the Love of her Life...
I began to write her about once a month. Just ramblings and going ons about our recent move to Florida after living fifty six years in Georgia, where she also lived.
Every blue moon I'd receive a card or note from her in the mail, unexpectedly.
They were always sweet, short and to the point.
I even got a postcard from her, when she was in Paris once.
I was just writing to give her something else to think about for maybe five or six minutes, so that maybe for five or six minutes, she wasn't totally consumed by the grief which was killing her spirit...
bit, by bit, by bit.
She mailed me a pack of cocktail napkins one time. I still have them. On the front was this picture and these words:
It looked just like a picture from our parent's Sunday school parties. They had some wild and crazy ones...and were all stone cold sober.
They had themed parties and held progressive dinners on the weekends.
They had "Womanless Weddings" in the fellowship hall, where the men played all the parts.
Both my parents taught us in Sunday School at various points
and we grew up side by side with all these families.
I even remember when they had a "Hippie Party" one time.
This is my Dad and his Sunday School teacher, who was also his tennis partner for decades.
I was such a lucky kid to grow up in such a wonderful time, surrounded by wonderful people.
Unfortunately there are fewer of us left around here these days but by this point must be "Standing Room Only" upstairs with The Big Guy, and trust me, quite the party.
I'm pretty sure they allow ashtrays in Heaven now.
Time charges on, whether we want it to or not.
I lost my own mother when I was seventeen.
I watched her die, in less than one (totally unexpected) minute, when out shopping for school clothes with my older sister.
In hindsight (almost a quarter of a century later)
...good for you, Mama.
My brother says our family takes the Express Checkout...
but he's right. If ya gotta go,
GO!!
Our father went from healthy to being on life support in less than two days.
Then about a week later,
he was gone as well.
I was lucky enough to dance with him at a Valentine's Dance, my senior year in high school. He was a chaperone.
Mama had died just six months earlier.
They were in love every day of their marriage, and it showed.
I've been blessed my entire life, with a couple of tough losses to swallow.
In the grand scheme of things, that's a win in my book.
The older I get, the more loved ones I lose.
It's just part of me being lucky enough, to grow older.
I'm turning sixty next year...
If God lets me.
Live your life like there is no tomorrow,
because tomorrow is never a sure thing.
If you want to be a good and decent person, you best do it now.
My dear departed friend lived, and died, by these very words.
Till next time, COTTON
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