Memories of a Dear Friend

I lost my special friend Betty recently and wanted to share some memories. We met while walking our dogs. I had just moved to the neighborhood after living in a house in the middle of the woods for 10 years, where my only neighbors were raccoons, deer and wild turkeys. Sure, that sounds ideal when you think of some of your own neighbors, but I had started to miss a little human contact.

It's amazing that she even started talking to me. I mean, I was perfecting the art of rolling out of bed and walking my dog in the clothes I slept in. Take time to brush teeth or hair - naaahhh. She was more than "put together". She wore colorful jackets, wide brimmed hats, and I was pretty sure she was fully groomed, no matter what ungodly time we insomniacs passed each other in the morning. Small talk turned into a close friendship. She was a number of years older than me, but her mental attitude and mine were about the same age. And her style - artist chic!

When I met her, she was planning a photo safari trip to Africa with a friend and I was planning my first solo trip to Europe. It ended up that we were leaving on the same day and were staying in hotels side by side near the airport so we could catch early flights. I was seeing many commonalities between us.

We were both sticklers for being on time. If I said I would pick her up at 8:30, she would be waiting outside at 8:29 knowing I would be exactly on time. Once, for fun, I told her I'd be there at 5:17 and there she was, waiting.

We had a favorite Mexican restaurant we would go to about once a month and would both order the same meals each time - with the same beer. I have to admit that I usually had her order the beer because I sometimes, OK often, forgot the name of it - and she never did. What a memory she had! She said that every morning she went on to the AARP website and did all of the daily puzzles. Hmmm, maybe I would have remembered the name of "our" beer if I had not spent my morning reading the celeb mags.

She did start me on the road to addiction - addiction to Hidden Object games! It started with her giving me one to try (doesn't it always?) and ended with a full blown obsession to those games. And she remembered the names of just about all of the hundreds of games she played. Just before she passed, I told her I had just purchased a number of new games, but of course I couldn't remember their names. A short time later she emailed me to remind me to tell her the names of those games. When I finally looked them all up she wrote back quickly to tell me how many stars they had been rated and that I made good choices. She probably had played them all long ago.

My friend was an artist and I admired her paintings, amazing quilts, and found object pieces. I am a quasi writer but she read my blogs and gave me positive feedback regularly. I was recently in Italy for 3 months with my dog and wrote a daily blog about my adventures. She couldn't figure out how to write a comment on my blog, but often wrote me an email with comments specifically about what I had written. She said every morning she got up, got her coffee and read my blog. She checked it again before she went to bed. That gave me motivation to keep writing, and to make sure my writing was worthy of her attention. I loved to make her laugh.

When I got home from Italy, I was eager to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant with her. But when I saw her I could see she was in poor health. She wasn't able to leave the house. Over the next few months her health started to slowly improve and finally about 2 months ago, we were able to start going out and have some fun again.

Whether it was going out to eat, shopping, going to a doctor's appointment or me coming over to fix some little problem she was having, the visits were always filled with smiles, intimate conversation and ended with us both saying "I love you".

On February 29, I thought we needed to so something special since that day only comes once every 4 years. She and our friend Carol were up for anything. We ended up going thrift store shopping, going to eat at that favorite Mexican restaurant and going to a psychic. We had planned to all go to the Psychic Fair at the end of the month, but Betty thought that it was OK if we went this time, since it was a month before that Fair.

We crazy ladies decided to all stay in the room when each was having their reading for support and to be able to help each other remember what was said; three brains equals just a little better memory than Betty's alone!

Before the reading, the lady told us that with all of us in the room, sometimes the feelings she would get about one person were really related to someone else in the room. I guess we were just too cozy to be able to separate our auras. A few times, that did happen. One in particular stood out to me.

She asked how Betty and I met and we gave our story. She looked at Betty and said something like (no, I can't remember it exactly) "You needed to meet her. You were in need of her as a friend. You were feeling down". I saw Betty nod her head a little. But as I sat there quietly, I know she was reading me. That chance meeting walking our dogs in the wee hours of the morning gave me over four years of an intimate friendship with a beautiful, loving and insightful woman. When she was ill I told her that she needed to get better because I couldn't bear not having her in my life. She said "We were meant to be friends. We were friends in a past life and will be friends in our next life." I am counting on it.