Yesterday was a dear friends birthday. I had a super busy day and didn't have time to sit and think about it much other than to send a quick Facebook Happy Birthday...one of the things I like best about facebook.
But I wanted to take a minute today to say a Belated Happy Birthday to her because she means a great deal to me.
Now I have to go back about 7 years to tell the story of how our friendship came about. Not that we weren't friends before that. We were but only because she was one of my mom's best friends. I first met her back in 1977 when my parents moved to Kingfisher. So in actuality I have known her for 34 years. Thats a long time. Mostly I knew her because she and my mom and my dad and her husband were good friends and ran around together, took trips together, went to Church together. My mom loved her dearly and in the last years of her life they were the best of friends. She had been divorced years earlier and my mom worried about her being alone. She even tried to set her up a couple of times but that didn't work out.
It was this friend that my mom confided in those last months of her life. And I beleive when my mom died, this friend felt the loss just as acutely as we did. Her heart was broken just like ours.
Several months after my mom dies, my dad had a seizure and was not allowed to drive. She stepped in and began to drive him wherever he needed to go. My dad was grieving for my mom and dealing with the loss of his independence at the same time. She was grieving my mom and looking after my dad just as she had promised my mom she would.
At first it was a little difficult because it felt weird to see my dad with someone else, especially my mom's best friend. In the heartache and grief that I was feeling over the loss of my mom, it was hard to seperate out the emotions of seeing my dad date again, seeing my mom's friend with my dad....It was very difficult. It felt like a betrayal of my mom and dad's marriage to see him with someone else. Of course it wasn't. My mom was gone and not coming back. And the last thing my beautiful, joyful, positive, loving mom would want was for my dad to be lonely and unhappy without her.
As the time went by it got easier to see her with my dad. She came to a few family gatherings with him which was a little uncomfortable for her and for us. Still, there was never a time she overstepped the boundaries. Always, she honored the place that my mom held in my dad's life. Still does.
And now that they have been together for a while, its easy to see that grief over my mom is what brought them together in the first place. His wife, her best friend. What a comfort to have each other as they navigated throught the feelings of loss and sadness.
My dad told me recently that when he moved out of the home he and my mom shared and was packing up his things to move way in the back of a dresser drawer he found a note my mom had written to him before she died. She had placed it in the back of the drawer. Probably knowing that it would be years before he found it. I don't remember the exact words of the note because when my dad showed it to me the tears blurred my vision. But I do remember that it was a note telling him to move on with his life...and to take care of her friend Deronda since she wasn't there to take care of her.
And now there is a room in their home that Deronda calls "LeeAnn's room." Since I'm pretty much the only one of my siblings that doesn't live close or visits Kingfisher and needs a place to stay, its become "my room." Whats special about this room is the decoration. My mom loved animal prints. Her house when she died was full of zebras, and leopards,and assorted wildlife prints and plaques and lamps and wall hangings. To walk into this room is for me like walking into my mom's home for Deronda has decorated it just as my mother would have.
I have never failed to visit that she hasn't given me some sort of gift with a Sunflower on it. Something she knows I love and something my mom would do when I visited so that I would know that I had been on her mind.
What a wonderful friend she has become. What a comfort to know that my dad is not alone. What a pleasure it is to sit with her and laugh about things my mom said or did. There is no jealousy, no hurt feelings, no envy. Just shared memories of a beautiful person that loved us both. I am as comfortable there in that home as I was in my mom and dad's home. Thats a pretty wonderful feeling.
Sometimes when I am there and telling her some funny story about something I did and she laughs and says you are just like your mom, I thank God for the blessing she is in my life. My mom left behind a daughter and a friend who loved her dearly. Who will never forget her. And who by the grace of God have bonded in a way no one could have imagined...or predicted long ago on that day in 1977 when my mom said "this is my friend Deronda...this is my daughter LeeAnn. I love you Deronda and I hope your birthday was as special as you are. LeeAnn
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