Here's to Judy

It seems like the world is nothing but hate and turmoil these days.  However, I wake up with a loving tribe every morning; 3 loving pups and a husband who is my truly other half, family I love, and a small trusted tribe of others that I treasure.  I am blessed.  Sometimes you have to work to look for your blessings and sometimes they are right there in front of you.  Sometimes it has been that constant stream of love and support and laughter over your whole life, the important parts and the horrible parts we endure.  Someone always within reach.  Grasp that and hold on for dear life because it is a rarity.  Consistency in love and support are the bricks in a special foundation we all would love to say we have.  I had that.

My best friend died last night...

I'm still in that "I'm not sure how to feel" stage.  She was so very ill that I prayed to Archangel Michael daily to take her peacefully.  She had reached out in the middle of the night almost 2 weeks ago and asked me to come home to be with her.  Before 10 a.m. the next day I had rescheduled a week's worth of life and was on the road for the 8-hour drive to get to her.  And we had 3 good, long days together laughing and reminiscing and loving before I started back home.  We Face Timed one more time after I got back home...

We met in middle school when we were about 12 and were friends but it was not that "love at first sight" bestie thing.  Early in high school we were a little tighter and by end of sophomore year really close.  But sadly, the thing that bound us tighter than ever in friendship and being there for one another was the fact that we were bullied by the same group of boys our last couple of years in high school.  Three guys who picked us, for whatever reason, and would not let up.  

My tribe in high school, three girls I felt were my peeps: a blonde, a brunette and a redhead.  The redhead is still my red-haired beauty but the brunette has gone grey and these days I'm the blonde.  But Judy was the blonde back then and a force in her own right.  She was strong, fearless, outspoken and my protector of sorts.  She got her driver's license two months before I did and made sure she took me out several times a week ahead of my birthday to practice the course.  That was the summer that she was grounded for the WHOLE summer because we got caught drinking, so she'd wait until her mom and dad went to work and then sneak out and come get me to practice.  Once she was convinced that I had it down, we'd "cruise the strip" and drive around looking for the boy I had a crush on.  

She was there when I got a gut punch.  I had been a cheerleader in high school and you had to try out each year to get back on the squad.  It was my "activity" and my way of getting out because home with my mother was a special kind of hell.  But going into senior year, a boy I had been dating and broken up with decided he would retaliate and his best friend/basketball captain got himself on as a judge for tryouts.  For all my effort at tryouts the captain buddy scored me a 0 on everything, meaning I would not make the squad senior year.  The person in charge of the squad and tryouts acknowledged it and did nothing.  I was heartbroken but also saw what was coming by having no activity for senior year, especially one I loved so much.  And in my grief of that loss, Judy to the rescue...

She helped me get a job where she worked at Osco Drug store and on the random days we worked together would come pick me up.  She had gone to an off-campus program our senior year to prepare entrance to a nursing program and was back one day a week on campus. She made sure that we connected on that one day in the hallway by my locker for talks.  She knew that my compass was a bit off caliber and helped refocus.  Home was not easy and she became that rudder to keep the ship in line that last year.

Those locker chats were also a glaring opportunity to potentially catch one or all the boys bullying us. They enjoyed drawing lewd pictures of male anatomy and describing what they thought I should be doing to them and dropping those notes into my locker.  Then, knowing when I typically went to my locker, one or two of them would hang nearby and watch as I opened my locker, notes fell out and I saw them.  The first several times it happened with Judy in tow, she scooped them up and walked the hall looking for the little cowards.  Then the handmade porn promptly went into the trash.  One locker chat she looked at me and said, "you're done with this contraption, take your books and shit home and don't ever use it again."  And so it was.  She was my foundation at a time that I felt like I had no heart left in me.  She was my courage and my rock when I needed it most.

And we continued to solidify that bond through the old "misery loves company" adage.  We were both miserable.  Later that year in spring there was to be a senior class BBQ, if I remember correctly on the front lawn of the school.  As happens in schools, posters were adorning the walls with the date and time and various pictures advertising food.  The "boy group" had taken to making posters of a pig laying on its side with piglets suckling and put my bestie's name on the pig and names of senior boys as the piglets.  She was horrified and embarrassed and we wondered what she had done to bring this situation on.  She was not even on campus anymore! Time for me to be the rock.  I went to the principal's office and told him about them, asked him to look at them.  I asked that they be taken down since they were offensive.  As we encounter as women from time to time, his answer was "Oh, boys will be boys, just ignore it."  Yeah asshat, and if it were your daughter?  But that was all we could do and she stayed away until graduation.  So, we just took to getting together a lot outside of school.

But, as life would have it there was soon to be joy to share now that the hell we knew as high school was over. She and another girl drove to Daytona Beach for a "graduation trip" and life took a huge turn there.  When Judy returned home, she said "I met a guy."  My first thought was that she probably met a dozen, she was gorgeous and magnetic.  We spent the next few months talking about him and she would tell me about notes and romantic phone calls. In November of that year when I was home from my first semester at college, I was out at a local bar with some other girls and she said came over to me and said she wanted me to meet someone.  And there he was.  It was clear that these two were meant to be, you could feel it.  And they were married 9 months later and when she left us last night, they were 48 into a marriage many only dream of.  Add into that two sons who are lovely souls and successful gentlemen.  

As years went by, and she lived in Florida for several of them, we talked often.  She and her family moved back to IL after several years and when I was home seeing my parents she would stop by.  I remember exactly where I was when she called to tell me that she was pregnant with son #1.  And thankfully he is a beloved part of my life as is her husband.  She and I had late night phone calls when everyone was asleep, quiet conversations that were musings on life, giggles remembering, wishes for the future.  And the week of my wedding when my mom was, once again creating her own special hell for the event, Judy called me to talk me off the ceiling.  She was ALWAYS there.  Thankfully, I was there at the end when she called and asked for one last visit.  

Judy had a reverent and an irreverent side and sometimes they became one.  As she lay dying and battling cancer, I sat with her talking about things we may or may not have covered over 50+ years as friends.  One of the things she brought up was that she wondered if she'd get into Heaven and what it was like.  She asked me what I thought it was and I answered with the explanation that the "vehicle" she was driving right now was rusted, 4 flat tires, water and oil and fuel pumps shot, cracked windshield, etc.  But when she gets to Heaven, she'll be driving a Rolls Royce convertible with the top down, racing in the streets with the radio blasting and her mom and dad in the back seat and her brother next to her in front.  I asked her what she thought it would be like.   She told me that a clergy person had visited the day before and quoted her a verse from the Bible saying it would be mansions of jewels with streets of gold.  When I asked her if that's what she envisioned, she said very "Judy-like": "F that, those streets of gold nonsense would be just one more thing for me to polish and clean!"  That's our girl...

She said her idea of Heaven was laying in the hammock on a beautiful day watching her hummingbirds and deer and eating a gigantic stromboli sandwich.  And lo and behold she had been gone less than 24 hours and this popped up on my husband's facebook page completely out of the blue:

 

Yep, she's already mastered messaging from Heaven to let us know she can now eat anything she wants now and is smiling down.

 

We ended up taking such different paths after high school. She married right away, moved away and had a family.  I went away to university, then grad school, started a career and as she put it "dated every asshole and kissed every frog in my path to find the prince."  Eventually, I got married and moved even further from her but late-night chats still were on the schedule.  Her support and care never wavered.  We laughed, we cried, when we lost parents, we called each other first. And with my last visit I have been grateful to create an even stronger bond with her oldest son.  

 

I have been blessed to have other women in my life I would classify as my tribe, my besties in their own right. Sherry has already left and watches from Heaven and now I am deeply connected to her daughter. Sue is my FaceTime and travel pal (there is some wine drinkin' in there too,) LG a longtime confidant from previous jobs, my sister-in-law Lisa is an angel and of course the brunette and redhead from the same days as Judy are still my jewels.  I treasure them deeply.  Judy was from the beginning of those days developing friendships and she survived the years and the hellish stuff.

 

The foundation Judy created by holding me up during those times when I was desperately lonely and unsure of myself, the times when I felt like I had nowhere to turn for anything created a lifelong bond.  The times when she reached out herself and said "I need YOU" set the path for a relationship that lasted more than 50 years. She knew everything I was going through at home and never judged though I think she would have loved to voice her opinion now and then.  

 

There are so many more Judy stories, SO many more. And there will be many more. Her oldest son is a gifted writer and created an obituary that captured her perfectly. I know there will be signs from above, she will love that. And being the practical joker, I can only imagine the things that will be happening in our house!  I will just miss the phone calls and now I must understand we are "talking" in different ways. 

But now when I tell her this it takes on all new meaning.  But I will still say it to her:

Carry on you sparkly, wild, insane supernova!  Come see me often, I love you and miss you.  I'll be looking for signs and listening for "Hey Jude."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gratitude for people passing through my life...

October 30, 2024...

Life has been busy, moving like a rushing stream after a rain it seems.  The whole last year feels like a blur, mostly racing by in a wash of different levels of grief at times as we lost a beloved elder.  As her trustee, her memory is kept alive through contact with our new "appointed" family whom we love like they have been there all our lives.  Other times, it is the depth of business connected with the estate that keeps she and her "love bug" (husband Norman) in our presence on a regular basis.  We also have a beloved BFF that is an enormous part of our lives moving through the stages of cancer and treatment that keep us focused with razor sharp hearts on what is important at this stage.

Thus the timing of the last few weeks.  Yesterday in particular.  It was a day layered with emotion and I found myself sitting with my wine last night while the hubs was at puppy school with one of the fur kids as I processed a heart full of "stuff."

Yesterday was my parents' 70th wedding anniversary.  They have been gone nearly 19 years now.  If you've read any of the entries of the blog, you know that while my Dad and I were close and he was my first love, my mother and I had, on a fantastic day, a challenging relationship.  I am, as my childhood girlfriend has said, generous in my memories of my mother and I have chosen that simply so that the trauma of some of her words and actions do not rule my memories.  My Dad had Alzheimer's (though he actually died of pneumonia) and it is one tough path for family and caregivers, even after our loved ones are at peace in the end.  They were married more than 50 years when they died 6 months apart.

So, when I found myself with our therapy dog visiting dementia patients yesterday, my heart was heavy and full at the same time.  One person in particular pulled on my heart.  As we went in to ask if they wanted a visit from pet therapy, the patient's children and a couple of grandchildren were there.  They were over the moon to have the pup come in!  The patient was not really "present" but they asked if I would pick my pup up and lay her on the bed (she's a smaller breed mix.)  I did and she laid her head on the patient's leg and started to lick their fingers.  My heart almost fell out of my chest with love.  The family was in heaven watching their loved one open their eyes and make sounds and wiggle fingers to find my pup to pet her.  They told me that the patient's pup had to be put to rest 3 weeks ago and one of the granddaughters pointed to the blue velvet bag on a shelf that said "I'll see you at the Rainbow Bridge."  They asked if they could take her picture with their loved one and spent a good amount of time loving on her themselves.  We talked about my Dad and I told them that when my Dad's dog came to visit that Dad would start talking in full, coherent sentences.  While it was a pull on my heart strings, it was clear that this was a wonderful time for the patient and their family.  After we were done, I ran into them in the parking lot and they thanked us again for taking time to spend with their loved one.

It is such a simple thing, take my little furry girl to see people; elders, dementia patients, sick people, the chemo patients getting infusions, kids at schools.  But the time can be felt multiplied exponentially in volumes of love, sometimes relief, sometimes small breakthroughs.  Yes, it took time to take her to classes and to practice and pass a certification test to do this.  But compared to that, the time we spend hopefully bringing joy to others, giving love and joy and sometimes hope cannot be measured in any way that I can think of.

Driving home thinking about this gave way to thinking about one of my yoga students.  I teach yoga at a global headquarters corporate fitness center in our area.  I am blessed to teach twice a week; one in person and one virtual.  In person class has a gentleman that has been a regular for the last year at least.  He is just a little bit younger than I am and is here from Korea working.  I only mention where he is from because I have a love and passion for learning about other cultures and am devout in my belief that curiosity is the gateway to understanding and acceptance.  The more you are learning about someone, the more there is to embrace. 

Several weeks ago as we started to warm up for class, we determined it would be just he and I that day.  I shared that I would be gone for the next 2 weeks on vacation to Peru and he asked if I was going to Machu Picchu.  I told him I was, it was a "bucket list" trip for both my husband and me.  He then asked me if I had seen the movie "The Bucket List."  I told him I had not and asked him what it was about, assuming it was about checking things off the "bucket list."

He gave me a short synopsis of the plot with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman but stopped short of detailing anything and told me I needed to see it myself.  He said what he found most important were the two questions.  When I asked him what two questions, he said that part of the plot was that Morgan Freeman's character asks Jack Nicholson's character two questions about finding joy in life:

*have you found joy in your life?

*has your life brought joy to others?

Morgan Freeman asks Nicholson these questions after telling him about an ancient Egyptian belief that the gods ask these two questions to souls at the entrance to heaven.  The answers determine whether the soul is admitted to heaven.  And it had my mind explode into thought...

In a time of such hate and such judgment, do YOU, do WE bring joy into others' lives?  Sometimes it is easy, sometimes you have to truly create a focus of it.  Recently, this popped into my social media account:

So, what do you think?  Which is more important or which is more important to YOU?  To others in your circle?  To the world now?  I know I have found joy in my life but I think of the others who so desperately need it and I try to use my life to create joy in others' lives.

February 6, 2025...

As I reflected back on 2024 (update, this is now 2025 since I am stellar at procrastination) I recall a young man that I met as I hired him for a business project connected to the estate I mentioned I am trustee for.  The project required that I engage the services of an art appraiser with a special focus.  No small task, let me assure you.  I found a young man (I say "young" because I have about 22 years on him) willing to take on the project and he and his colleague traveled to do the work where the collection is housed not far from where we live.  Upon finishing the first day, the hubs and I invited the two of them to dinner.  As we sat and began to unwind, I asked my new friend what was on his dance card for the summer since we were at the front door of June.  I expected him to say something like he was going to paint the bedroom or landscape in his yard.  His answer intrigued me when he replied "I'm contemplating the difference between joy and pleasure."  Now THAT got my grey matter churning...  

What is the difference between joy and pleasure to each of us?  Joy?  I think of some of the recent travel the hubs and I have done.  Especially the concerts.  Wrigley Field and our third Dublin concert to see  Springsteen.  The Boss in Pittsburgh where we spent time with the hub's last uncle and a passel of cousins that we laughed and loved with and realized we had not seen in nearly 25 years.  Our annual trip to Ireland and time with our beloved friends Michelle and Damien that we adore.  All were certainly pleasurable but on another note, truly gave us immense JOY!  

As we progressed on this project a few weeks later, I was in contact with my new pal to let him know that we would be in Chicago to meet up with some family and see the Rolling Stones in concert.  As a resident of the Chicago area, he commented that it would really be fun to attend that concert but he had his kids that weekend and was tied up.  Ever being the hedonistic, sparkly super nova of "go for it" moments, I suggested that he take his kids if they were an appropriate age.  He commented that he'd think about it.

To my great JOY, I got a text a few days later telling me that not only did he take his kids to the show but his parents too!!!  Then at that moment I absorbed the difference that can present itself between the two elements of joy and pleasure.  In a conversation shortly thereafter I could FEEL the joy that emanated from this wonderful friend as he told me about the JOY of experiencing a concert that truly is historical (FYI the 3 remaining founding members of the Rolling Stones playing are over 80) with not only his two kids but his parents.  

Pleasure?  I get great pleasure from completing my to-do list in a timely fashion.  I get great pleasure from getting the parking spot on the end at Costco.  I feel great pleasure at finding what I want on sale and walking out of the store feeling like I won the lottery even if I only saved $3.  But JOY?  That is the glittering energy that fills you from head to toe and lasts when you pull the thoughts back inside you.  That is what I feel thinking of Springsteen concerts in Ireland we've been to and hearing the song "Thunder Road."  That is the feeling looking at the hubs and my pups.  That is what fills me up on summer days rowing on a quiet morning looking at the eagles sitting in the trees.

In a world SO filled with bad vibes these days, find your JOY.  Lately there is such lousy energy out there at times, it takes work.  But keep your focus, find your JOY and hang on for dear life.  Spread that JOY all over the place...

Oh, yes!  And by the way, make a little effort to bring JOY to others for a snippet of time.  You never know what battles people are fighting silently, send them something to fill their hearts.

Carry on sparkly super novas!