Thursday, May 12, 2016
~ A porch, a cup of coffee, and the door to her heart...
(Written by Mary Johnson on May 6, 2016)
In this life, a temporary journey on earth, how often the unexpected happens....
Betty and her family had been our neighbors, a few houses apart, for years...years as in her remembering her husband Frank walking their granddaughter over to my house to play with my two girls when they were single digits...
And then there was her porch...
Countless times Tom and I would walk our cocker spaniel Toby, and "the waves" started as we passed Betty's house on the corner...she would be sitting there with her husband Frank by her side... As time would have it, Betty's husband eventually passed away....and then her precious son Frank, Jr., who lived with her - the grass cutter and the sidewalk patcher - he, too, left this world.... Even our Toby followed them on that path to heaven...
That's when the coffee invitations started.
I would have Tom head home with our current dogs Rusty and Remy while I stood and talked with her... (Not sure if that was wise, for she told me of the time Tom was walking by their house... Frank, Jr. asked Tom, who was holding Toby's leash, where his dog was. Tom replied, ""Right here..." But as Tom's eyes followed to the end of the leash, no dog!! Thankfully, Toby knew the daily walk routine and was not too far behind!! Betty loved telling me that story over and over again!)
Betty would invite me to sit on her back screened-in porch...and she would make me coffee with those tea dipping bags. Of course, we couldn't leave out the desserts - and candy at times, courtesy of her sister Marion:)
We started to get into a weekly ritual of my going over...and at times I would stop at our Friendly Bake Shop in town for their one-of-a-kind pastries or she would have those Polish jelly buns from Price Chopper...the kind that oozed with each bite!
From there, we moved on to our trips to her doctors, and of course our lunches out!:) Sometimes my daughter Steph would join us. Our conversations, in our intimate circle, would go from what a nice day it was, to the concerns and blessings of our families...to our world being in such chaos! Oh, dear, our world...We would put our heads together as if we were part of the U.N. Council!!
The hands of time kept encircling the clock and eventually after a fall or two, Betty moved not too far away to her sister Marion's home. Our visits continued, but more occasionally than often. And then she moved on to a nursing home with intervals of hospitalizations and rehabs.
And now, her body finally wanting eternal rest, Betty left this world today for her heavenly mansion...one, I'm sure, with a beautiful porch attached to it!!