Beach Bunnies...now and then...

 I've been looking for this picture! one of my all time faves; Me and Dee circa 1968. I decided to put the pictures in the blog first and then add the words around it. Why? because it is such a big deal to "insert" a photo. This Blog thing was much easier when I first started a few years ago. Facebook is the same way. They have added so much that it has lost it's simplicity and the charm that goes with that, especially for older chics, like me... Why can't things just be simple? Like finding pictures in the first place. I should be able to search pictures and then find them all in one neat little file where they just "flew" into every time I added any kind of picture anywhere like Facebook, like a blog, like an email. It's my stuff! it should all go flying into my file on my computer, right? I am such  a simplistic dreamer sometimes. I always say "If computers are so smart, then why aren't they smarter or simpler?"  Beats me...So anyway this picture should be in my Beach pictures file or make it Beach Bunny file. No, it is  nothing like a Playboy Bunny...Beach Bunnies were "invented" in the 60s and I was an original and so was Dee. All you had to do was put on a Bikini and pose and take pictures and go to the beach and be tan and cute

and have fun...that's it! They made a bunch of movies then too that had Beach Bunnies everywhere! And believe it or not: Annette Funicello was an original all her own and she wore a one-piece. And don't forget Gidget! I found that picture because that was Dee 100 % through and through.

And so it was in the 70s, my life revolved around the beach and the sun. My hubby and I hung out at Temple Beth El Sea Cove and it was our church back in the day...We worshiped the Sun and the Son. We used baby oil and iodine to Bless ourselves and we used Vaseline too. I was the lucky one. No skin cancer for me but my hubby was not so lucky; he had already spent many years in the sun as a surfer and our Dermatologist removed this and biopsied that and made him look like Frankenstein with all the stitching she did. And so to this day, he stays out of the sun and wears ball caps and long sleeve shirts. I just 'stopped' going in the sun when I was 25 yrs old. Something told me it was just not a good idea and my skin is not perfect and beautiful and awesome, but it really is okay compared to the wrinkled, leathered skin of some of my counterparts who continued their undeserved worship of the Sun God. I was obsessed though, for sure. I made my own bathing suits, the kind that had no straps so I could tan to the max and I even made matching suits for my little girl, who had her first sunburn when she was not even two.
 I was 19 then and my head was up in the (sunny) clouds. I wanted to be at the beach, no matter the cost. In those days, going to the beach was free! No parking fees. It was great and we lived only a few miles from the beach in the first place. My hubby used to "jog" to the beach when people actually I had two girls who grew up and had two girls, one each and they were all raised as Beach Bunnies too. Although as I got older, I was much like a reformed smoker and preached against being in the sun and nagged about putting on sunblock...all that annoying stuff that your kids won't listen to in the first place. Hey! We are Florida natives, this is our birthright. We are "supposed' to be obsessed with the sun and they came by it quite naturally. From tiny tots to little girls to mommies themselves, it just always felt good to be in the water and in the sun... And although I don't go as often as I would like because I do not  want to be mistaken for some other kind of sea creature due to unwanted, unnecessary and undeserved weight gain. I do love the water and the sun and I dream about having a pool in my backyard someday. I think almost every single one of my friends has a pool and I am so very envious of them all. I would love nothing more than to come home from work and put on a bathing suit (no matter what the size) and jump right into a sparkling blue cement pond! Instead I come home and put on my P.J.s and jump into bed as soon as I can. My bones would feel so much better in that pool, I just know they would...



And so another generation of Beach bunnies is growing up and instead of surfing on a board they paddle on a board...

All sunshine and lollipops  aside, I feel compelled to warn against the sun and the dangers of too much exposure:  "Skin cancer is the most common of all cancers.

The number of skin cancer patients is growing steadily. Estimates of Americans diagnosed with skin cancer each year range from 700,000 to one million.
Half of all Americans will experience skin cancer at least once before the age of 65. The average age of patients diagnosed with skin cancer is dropping, from 50 to 40 years old.
Approximately 75 percent of damage to your skin from the sun happens by the time you are 20 years old.
More than 90 percent of all skin cancer cases are due to overexposure to sunlight. Skin cancer is believed to result from overexposure to ultraviolet radiation.
Nearly 90 percent of skin cancers are preventable, and if detected early, are highly curable. There are two types of skin cancer: melanoma and non-melanoma. More than 80 percent of skin cancer deaths are from melanoma.
In the United States, the number of new cases of melanoma (a type of malignant skin cancer) has more than doubled in the past 20 years. Florida has the second highest rate of melanoma cases in the nation. The top four states are (1) California, (2) Florida, (3) Texas and (4) New York.
Genetics are considered one of the greatest known risk factors for skin cancer, including a genetic predisposition for melanoma and bearing numerous moles."


No matter what the pros and cons of being a Beach Bunny are or were, there is one thing that will remain true. As long as we live in Florida, where the sun shines and the water is crystal blue, we will continue to live as Beach Bunnies live... And no matter how young, how old, how plump or how skinny we are we will pass on this tradition to our little bunnies of the future.

Crystal Blue Persuasion, oh yeah, it's the new vibration...



What a week I am Having!

So, here is something to "blog about" I have what you want to call...screwed up teeth! I have suffered my whole life and it has not one thing to do with not taking care of your teeth and everything to do with Genetics and being poor and having crummy Dentists and scary Dentists take care of you! What the French call 'Les incompetents' ??? I have so many unpleasant memories to recall: where shall I start?

How about when my brother G. pushed me backwards down a slide when we lived on 15th Street... Now it was all an accident, you see. My brother would NEVER do a thing to hurt Sweet little ole, pretty little Me. So how about that? Well! That is when I "chipped" my front tooth and that was the end of  Sweet little ole, pretty little Me. Geez, I was just a second grader. I had 10 more years of school pictures to get through...I don't even think I was taken to the Dentist that day. A dentist visit was reserved for true emergencies, like toothaches that made us cry ourselves to sleep.

I looked like an "Ipana" toothbrush commercial. It was a reason not to smile for the rest of my school days and it could have been an easy "fix" but I never met a dentist who figured that out until I was well out of high school. And all Dr Fix-it simply did was offer to file the chipped tooth and front teeth down a 'little'. Really? That was it! Done! All those years of being self-conscious and it could have been done sooner. I should have met Dr Fix-it first...

I went to a dentist when I was in second grade for the first time because of a toothache. He had an office just around the corner and I drew a picture for him and he hung it on his wall, I remember thinking "maybe he would not hurt me if I gave him a peace offering?" I was wrong! He pulled my tooth and it was a permanent tooth, the first of many I would lose over time. You see, it was $10 to pull and $12 to "fill" My brother thought it may have been $20 to fill, but I think it was only a two buck difference, myself. This is when I first knew we were basically poor.

There may be a few versions of what poor was back then, and we were not "no food, no shelter" poor, we were medically poor and that itself will tell the tale of a future life. I  have had the same job for 35+ years and the biggest attraction was having health insurance and dental insurance for me and my now family, although the pay out on dental insurance has basically sucked forever. It is a mysterious and secret society, the dental "trade" is, don't ya think? They never tell you what they are doing and what kind of materials and how far down they are grinding and how they really know where the root is when they do a root canal. And the bill has always described (God knows) what kind of procedure?and at the bottom is the all important exorbitant co-pay for you to pay right away, that day. How the hell does anyone know what their bill will be? How do we know if we have enough cash on hand? And how do we skip the embarrassment of that? We Don't! That's how...

They say that dentists have a high suicide rate? If that is true, then trust me, before they kick their own buckets, they have most likely been golfing twice a week, traveling to their Lake House in Tahoe every few months or been driving around in a Lamborghini for a few years. And some of them even have girlfriends or wives (or both) that they buy fancy jewelry and take to fancy dinners, I would imagine...They not only have a license to practice Dentistry, but they have had a super secret course in college that told them how to be great "pirates" I remember telling off one dentist that refused to give me my new partial because I still owed them, like $55. I told him that he was holding my teeth for "ransom" and he got all pissy with me. Strike a nerve there Doc?  So why the high suicide rate?

Hmm. .. always striving for perfection and never attaining it could be one reason. Because of course they all want to do their best to give us those perfect shiny white teeth and million dollar smiles, right?? Or is it because they really have charged us a million dollars for all that dental work?

I got an "estimate" for my permanent bridge that was thousands of dollars and has continued to cost me even more to "correct" all of his subsequent screw-ups. Gee, what shall I do? Get those fancy new teeth or buy a brand new car? Dentists are so uptight and they have no sense of humor... poor guys, that must be why they start to feel all bad about themselves and start looking for bridges to jump from? Or maybe it is the guilt they have over playing Captain Hook for so many years? Pay the money or walk the plank or just walk around "toothless" everyone! Of course, they are making poor bastards like us walk the plank on their yachts, you know...

So I thought I had finally found a good family dentist when my kids were little and we were all getting our dental work done. He was a busy guy, really busy...( His office manager was also his girl

friend, and yes, he was married, as well and I even overlooked that part because I thought he was pretty good for a "dentist") Now he had only 2 chairs, which he worked out of and there was an opening, a kind of half-wall, so he could go back and forth. One day, my cutest, little smartest, little girl asked me a question "Mommy, why does he not change gloves when he goes back and forth?" Oh my god, are you kidding me? Really? Out of the mouths of babes... same guy who would throw his tools on top of the bib they gave you and inch up real close to your chair, kinda right next to your breast, so he could reach the tools, I guess...Dr Busy Guy was a 'dentaphile' and if that's not a word, well, it should be!

So over the years, living in the same house, I would shop for different offices and stay just until they did something either weird or  made me feel uncomfortable, which was both for  Dr Busy Guy. I went to a dentist that used to tell dirty jokes, in fact he was the Pirate, and not a nice one, like Jack Sparrow. He even had nerve to say inappropriate stuff in front of my husband. Some might think he said funny stuff, but I can't even repeat the crap he said. When I found out he was telling the same jokes to my pretty, young single mother girlfriend, that was it...What a jackass he turned out to be. I know some people who still go to him, no problem, no dirty jokes; so maybe Dr Jack Ass had  a thing for 'blondes'

I went to another guy whose office was almost an hour away and I liked him, but the distance was too much. He had a practice with his daughter and I wondered about female dentists so I tried going to one closer to home and it was looking good, great office, they took good care and time to make sure my dental plan was ok and I was even willing to get a Dental Credit Card. There was one little thing they forgot to do though and  that was check and see if they took my insurance, and I had given that info on the phone before my appointment. After all that, they didn't take it and so it was what it was.

My brother and his wife and a whole lotta co-workers had been going to a guy and they were all happy with him, so why not? I practically had letters of  recommendation! So that is how I became involved with my current Dental Office. The office staff was friendly and even checked to see if they took my insurance. And the assistants made sure he didn't drop tools on your bosom. I thought he was "the one" Although he was Door # 1: Dental work and new smile,  not door #2:  a new car. I shoulda took the car, at least I could have traded that in.

So back to my front tooth...after all those years, it was "fractured" and I was at risk of losing it and I sure  didn't want that. So was I gonna buy a "used" smile or a brand new shiny smile? The difference was, oh gee, a few thousand $$ but I was gonna "treat" myself and get the new one. It took a crown, 2-3 root canals and a procedure called crown lengthening? WTH? to get even close to getting this smile, and when I did, I was SO, so happy! Finally, after all these years... a permanent bridge, and a partial. ( I lost a lot of teeth and had several failure to launch "root" canals which led to the loss of several teeth ( like I said, Genetics suck) I figured I was finally set as far as my teeth were, that is until...

I ended up in the ER with a gum infection a few days later, it was the weekend of course and that's gonna cost you a $100 co-pay for your medical insurance this time. The ER Doctor was young enough to be my kid, for crying out loud and she took care of it by giving me an exam that  made me cry out loud and then gave me proper Antibiotics to go. When I went for my re-check, the "car dentist" blew me off like it was a drag race. So I tried to blow him off and forget about it. Until... yes, another 'until'  my permanent bridge went AWOL and dropped right out of my mouth. When I went back, he explained it away by saying something about the glue not being right and possibly recalled. Excuse me, the glue did what???  so he used the proper glue this time and glued them back in and didn't even "charge" me for that visit. Hmm...

That was when I knew...Dr Car sold me a lemon and it was some kind of sour deal alright. I had nothing but problems from then on. Chronic Pain, which meant I needed more root canals, and Oh, he could do them, I didn't need the specialist, who I had seen prior to my involvement with him: Dr Know did a root canal that did not hurt or fail. Why did he not want me to go back to him? I am thinking he didn't want a fellow practitioner to say "What The Hell?" when he looked into a patients' mouth, that's what I am thinking. So like an idiot, I let him proceed. That was strange, though,because I was having so much pain that he started the root canal and gave me antibiotics and vicodin for several days until he could finish it. Dr. Know did it all in one shot! Crap...

Ok, so that was that? Oh no because it happened again: same M.O. same pain which needed antibiotics and vicodin first this time and then when I went back and told him that I still had pain, he decided to start the first half of the root canal anyway, which brings me to the present time. Thank God we finally got here, right? Game Over! I still needed the second half of the root canal and the pain obviously meant there was some kind of storm brewing, an infectious one at that! So Comes the Weekend and Pain and swelling was excruciating enough that I decided to go to ER and this time pay a $150 co-pay just to get a CT scan and make sure I had no infection traveling to my brain. Luckily, it only showed a large abcess located where? Right where he had started the root canal. If I'm lying, I'm dying...

The ER doctor didn't think to change my antibiotics to what we call " bigger guns". Hell, I had already told him to do a CT scan and give me a dose of Cleocin and Toradol for pain IV. I guess it was up to me to coax him into a change of medication as well. My lip  was now so swollen, I looked like I did this on purpose. Women pay big $$ for this and I only got "half a Kardashian lip"

So now what? I wanted a specialist to look at this and called the Oral Surgeon that I was referred to and got only a busy signal. Not for nothing, but my cousin Becky in Indiana "found" me a dental office that took Aetna and they actually answered the phone and could see me today! She and my sister Cee had been on a hunt all morning. And as it turns out, I had been to this office years ago and so they took me as an "existing" patient. The office I was referred to with the busy signal  must have been too busy for ER followup pts, even if they were ON CALL!

And so Dr Nitrous looked at me and the x-rays I brought with me and asked what kind of work Dr Car did underneath this bridge work? How the hell would I know? It is a super secret, mysterious mystery to me! So he did something mysterious and relieved the pressure I had in my lip and even ordered Big Gun Antibiotics. So first he said, I didn't need him unless this kept happening and in which case I would need all teeth pulled and implants placed. ( Door # 3, finally) So I thought about the Vacation Home I could be buying instead and decided I would need help from a higher power this time. Dr Nitrous said he would call Dr Car and let me know what kind of plan would be in order, which he did, and of course, he suggested I complete the root canal with Dr Car ( And live happily ever after?)

No way! I am going back to Dr. Know to finish the job and then maybe I will go to, I dunno, Lenny the Lawyer to see if he can finish something else for me...
Names have been changed to protect The Guilty...


Let's give them something to talk about, a little mystery to figure out...

O where, O where have I been?

My sister re-read my whole blog and asked me why I stopped writing...I dunno...I got lost in the last few years and my writings got lost as well...I think I know when and why it happened now... I lost one of my best friends from Jr High and one from High School in the last year or so. Did I become depressed? Even more than usual? Maybe...maybe so...

Am I done grieving my friends now? Can I write again if I am? Will I write again if I am?  No, I am not done and maybe, just maybe I can write again, I dunno...

I have been angry and sad and mad... at God? No... He took them to be with Him. He does what He does. I don't question Him...much. And when I do, He lets me know  He is who He is and that "It is what it is" What?  you thought someone else made up that saying?...Try and change any little thing He is in charge of, just go ahead... I dare you...We won't get those answers until we come face to face with Him our very selves, now will we?

So why am I still so upset? And why is Facebook such a blessing and a curse? I have the answer to that one, yes I do...

I was at work one day and my sister called and told me that Donna had died. She saw it in her messages on  Facebook and it was sent  by her daughter,  I now know... I knew she would never joke about anything like that, so I immediately had a meltdown, right there, very softly in my cubby. Not so softly though that my friend did not come running to see what had happened. "What? When? How?" but I had no answers to any of these questions.

I was very kindly taken to an empty office by my friend where I proceeded to call Donna's daughter, her sister and then her mom, all in SC. I sat in that office for 3 long hours and never received a return call, (although Donna's daughter did send a message on Facebook later). Three long  hours. I called Dee and told her and she was so sorry. We were all friends since we were in 7th grade "My God, what happened?" I had no answer. I called Denise, who had been Donna's roommate at one time after high school and they had remained friends and kept in touch and I was sure she would know. She was stunned and started making phone calls of her own. She would get no information either and we kept in touch for several days hoping one of us would hear something. In an ironic twist of fate, Denise herself  passed away within the next several months and again we found out through Facebook. Her daughter apparently sent an E-message to my sister that showed up almost a year later. Strange, but true...

 Within the next few days, a service had been arranged according to the message we got. It is still blurry to me to this day though. Cee found the obituary online soon after but when final ... I did not have time to get there for services and to this day, I don't know if she was buried, cremated or what?  Hmm...Meanwhile I had sent a  plant with Daisies and had posted some pictures to her

Obituary page as well as messages. I sent sympathy cards to the family. I tried to message her brothers on Facebook... Nothing was acknowledged. I lost touch with her daughter and still don't know the whole story, although she said she would share with me someday. I can only guess her grief is blocking her as well.

Now I had not lived near her for many, many years. She had lived with me and my husband and our first baby and she loved being Aunt Donna. She adored her and helped me in every way she could. She moved in with Denise after that and her world became "complicated" and she would soon move away to SC where part of her family had already moved. They were originally from there and had gone back and forth for all the summers all through school and we were dedicated pen-pals for all those years...all those years...

So I lie awake and think "What happened?" Here's the craziest part; we were close, really close... We lived 4-5 blocks from each other on the same street from 7th grade through 12th grade and our parents were there many, many years later. Her parents still own that home and come down for the Winters. On Saturdays, we took turns and we got up early and met each other half way and then walked back together to whichever house we chose to clean first and then we went and cleaned the other house. We each had sisters, but this is how we did our chores, together...We were in each other's family homes all the time.

 We loved The Monkees and we watched every show and bought all the LPs (albums) with our babysitting money. My dad drove us to Miami to see them-our first concert! My sister Cee and Dee went too and we all wore "micro-mini" dresses and more or less got a lot of unwanted attention from some very "touchy-feely" boys there. Oddly enough, Jimi Hendrix was the opening act and that was a great story to tell for years to come.. Most people thought we were crazy for screaming "We want The Monkees" while Jimi Hendrix played Purple Haze. Years later, Cee and I actually met Mickey Dolenz and he told the same story, the same way and it was very bittersweet to meet him without Donna.

We were women of the 70s and we loved our clothes. Poor as church mice, but well dressed thanks to sewing skills learned in Home Ec class. We sewed a lot of our own clothes and we had Big Sister hand me downs. Donna always had a new pair of Bass Weejuns each year that she got in SC before  school started and Cee and I were secretly jealous of those shoes. We had Latisse purses and Gant shirts and Villager skirts, We were Carnaby Street, Twiggy makeup wearing, psychedelic print obsessed fashionistas! I even cut my hair like Twiggy. I was tall and skinny and a major Twiggy Wannabe. And Donna was maybe ONE size bigger than me and always thought she was a chubby girl. I was only skinny because I ate tomato and mayo sandwiches almost every day. Lunch meat was a special occasion at my house and we all loved fried bologna sandwiches and made that for lunch at Donna's (5 kids) or we went to Linda's ( 5 kids) around the corner. Why was it that the more kids a family had, the more food they always had? plenty to share, always. I somehow ended up at Dee's house (4 kids) around dinner and Mama Davis would sit me down for supper with them quite often. We had 3 kids in my family and three skinny ones at that. My brother and I refused to eat liver  (once a week) and snuck it to our dog Rebel or my sister Cee and they would oblige and so: one less meal a week for me and my brother!

Back to our clothes, though. When I say we were obsessed, I mean obsessed! It was better than LSD, which was popular and very scary in the 60s and the 70s. We knew kids who “dropped acid” but we got "high" shopping for psychedelic fabrics at Zayre's. My brother always said I was "naturally high" and sweet. I think in hindsight it was his way of telling me not to do drugs…

We used to sing in Donna's bathroom because it had great acoustics and our hairbrushes made the best microphones, too. Not many people knew what a truly beautiful voice Donna had... I just wanted to be her backup singer, that was all. She sang "High and Mighty" at a church function once and it was like an angel was singing. I would never forget it.  I remember she felt pressured by her family to sing and I went along for support. She was always shy around a lot of people, but never with any of us. She knew she was safe with us. We all went to the Baptist church together each Sunday. My dad would drop us off with Dee and Donna would already be there because she had to go to Sunday school. Her whole family went every single Sunday. We went when we went and Dee and I were baptized together, but Donna had done that long before. She “grew up” in church.  To this day, I drive by that same Baptist church and drive those same streets that we walked as well. Thankfully, it was there in church, we learned that if we came "just as I am" to meet Jesus, that we would all spend eternity together someday... The Doobie Brothers were right because "Jesus was just alright, oh yeah"

I remember one day Cee and I met up with Donna for a walk. We walked all over West Hollywood, which kept us thinner and healthier. On one particular day, in one of the most regrettable moments of my life, I made some dumb comment about Donna's Blue Toile Butterfly Shorts. What was I thinking? She was so hurt, she stomped off and went home. And then my sister and I did not know what to do... She was crushed and I was crushed that I had crushed her. She was the most sensitive, gentle soul, always, always... Somehow we got through it and we were fast friends again, but it always hurt me that I had hurt her (over Blue Toile Butterfly Shorts? really?) I think I was just jealous and to this day I can see that print and wish I had a pair of those exact shorts...

Dee was and still is my other best friend forever. She shared my world of socialization with the opposite sex and she was my mentor  as far as boys were concerned. I did not know how to talk to them, much less become friends with them or actually have a date or a boyfriend. Dee could just look at a guy and say "What a babe" and the next thing you knew, they were dating. She was amazing and I was so very crushed and sad when she moved to a small town about 3 hours away. It may as well have been a million miles away.  I will write about Dee another time because there is so much to tell of my other BFF as well. So as crushed as I was when Dee moved, I knew I had Cee and Donna.


Donna was my world of art and fantasy and music and theatre and design and of course, Shakespeare! I knew I could survive the last few years of high school and just be a girl, no need for a boyfriend. We were ok to just be us. We were progressive thinkers and did not even know it,

and she would get me through our Senior year, which brought us closer than ever. We took all the same classes. I took Shakespeare for her and she took Sewing for me. She helped me with my "to be or not to be's" and I helped her sew her Maxi-dress. She went on dates with me and my boyfriend (really!) She was so much fun and had the best sense of humor ever and he really enjoyed spending time with her, too. One fateful night, he introduced us all to "Tom Collins". We actually spent the
night at his house on July 4rth. No problem, my sister was there and she was dating his older brother and we had already told our mom that we were spending the night at Donna's and she told her mom we were spending the night at my house. Oldest trick in the book. We all had a Drunken Good time, our very first time. Bittersweet memories, yes bittersweet....

After high school, I was married and Donna lived with my husband and I and our new little baby in a one bedroom apartment downtown. We would drag out a mattress onto the floor each night and make it up for her to sleep. She would keep her money in a little chest and my husband (who also very much enjoyed her company) well, he would "make" her buy us a pizza at least once a week and if she hesitated, he would "threaten" her with a "mule bite"  

Now, a Mule Bite was a way of grabbing the knee so that it would either really, really hurt or really, really tickle  and she would always "give in" and get out the cash! It was more or less a game they played, because we would never take a penny for room and board while she was with us. After that she moved in with Denise for a while and eventually ended up in SC, where she met and married Randy many years later and had her own baby girl named after her husband and me: Randi-Marie. The truth is, she had a new life there and I was not aware of her wedding or having the baby until after the blessed events happened. I know she knew I would have come for both, but think she did not want me to feel pressured to make the trips. I never felt hurt by not knowing because, she honored me by naming her little girl with my name. She could do no wrong in my eyes and I could do no wrong in hers. That is the most important truth about our friendship. That, and the fact that we told each other everything... all the joy, all the pain, all the successes, all the failures, all the secrets, good and bad...

 She was still going back and forth to visit and always stayed at her Family Home. We would go to High School Reunions together and our favorite one was the 20th because we were BOTH skinny. We had both turned into yo-yo dieters and  would fight that battle for the rest of our lives. At this particular reunion, we happen to sit at a table with my husband's former girlfriend, as well. Donna and I thought it was quite hysterical when we went off to the Ladies room together and left himsitting there with her, and so we secretly watched from around the corner. He was very uncomfortable and very pissed at both of us! I had no problem because she had happened to marry one of my old boyfriends and by this time they were already divorced, so let's just say we were being "Mean Girls" for the first time in our lives...mean, pretty, skinny girls! And it was kinda fun, wickedly so, but fun! It was actually my second time though, if you want to count The Unfortunate Butterfly Shorts incident.

My husband and I drove to Gainesville when Donna's sister died at age 49. She was crushed and never really got over losing her and I would have felt the same had it been my loss. I wrote a poem "Grief's Door" for her (a la Shakespeare) after that loss. I had no idea this poem would carry me through so many losses of my own. So many that were so loved by me, including Donna. I read it and wonder where I got the words and I can only say the words came from The Good Lord Himself. In some ways, it is more of a prayer than a poem. Donna knew why I wrote it and she loved it and loved me for it...

The last time I talked to Donna was after her cousin from SC called me to tell me that Donna's niece was killed in a tragic highway accident and she was in so much grief that she could not even dial the phone to call me. I will always be grateful that Donna had her cousin contact me. I called right away and when she answered, all either of us could do was sob uncontrollably because the pain was so raw, so deep, so intense.. We began to talk for hours that night...I can still see where I was, what couch I was sitting on, the room I was in, it is all so vivid and clear. I tried to call her several times after that and left her many messages, but her poor heart was crushed again and I knew she would call again when she was ready to talk again, but she never did...and I never knew and still don't know what happened to her and my grief has waxed and waned ever since...

And so I wonder to this day, What in God's name would make Donna's family think that I should not be one of the first people, after her family of course, to be told of her passing? All I can do is forgive them, but can this human heart forget?
 I knew more about that girl than possibly anyone. I knew every beauty and every flaw. We told each other everything...everything. And more than that we forgave each other everything and our friendship was the true meaning of "unconditional love". My only solace is that I will see her again someday on that beautiful shore with the others I have loved and lost. And Mother Earth's secrets and heartaches will be no more, because we will be friends to "infinity and beyond"



A beautiful smile to hide the pain...did I ever tell you, you're my hero?...you are the wind beneath my wings...