I have been down since yesterday. It seems that my past is taking another hit.
A few days ago I learned about a sweet woman, one I mentioned in a blog a while ago, and today is her birthday (3/23), who passed on from cancer. Her name is Marlene: she was a lady, a woman of substance, and a class act, my classmate. We called her Molly after her Mom, because we were crazy high school kids, doing crazy things. I last saw her in June of 2010, at a diner with her husband and TLW (The Little Woman) for breakfast. We met because I was helping TLP (The Little Partner) Pam, preserve some photos, and Marlene did TLP a favor by bringing them to me while Marlene was visiting one of her children in my hometown.
On June 12th, 2010, I wrote about Marlene, and our last visit. The last paragraph went like this:
“We talked about classmates, who looked good and who did what and lived where, and as we left the restaurant and stood in the parking lot for one last; “Goodbye”, I stuck my arm out one more time, and she pinched. It was an enjoyable reprimand from a lovely lady!”
She pinched me at the memorial for classmates that had passed on, and for our high school that burned to the ground one awful day back in March of 1963, a day that changed a lot of my classmates and myself. Marlene pinched me and I asked her why. “For all those times you teased me back in high school” she said. So every time I saw her I stuck my arm out for her to pinch me one more time.
At the diner that Saturday morning: she and TLW chatted and seemed like old high school buddies themselves, having gone to two different high schools. We lingered long after breakfast in the restaurant and then in the parking lot.
She soon got sick with the cancer that eventually took her.
We will never get together again, no breakfast in a diner, no dinner at my home, I am sorry that she is no longer here. I wish I could feel her pinch one more time.
But this blog does not end here.
Yesterday I got an email from an old co-worker from an old company, informing me that another fellow co-worker I particularly enjoyed and liked knowing had died suddenly of a massive heart attack! His name was Spin, that’s what we called him, but his real name was Elliott. I first met Spin back in 1981, while he was delivering the office mail I believe, or some kind of documents through the creative department. The company filmed a TV commercial, and Spin appeared briefly in it. I kidded him that I was going to be his agent, and we would make money on his talents. Spin then ran into some terrible luck, getting an aneurism in his brain, which left him confined to wheelchair and incapable of working. There he would be the rest of his life.
Often I would find Spin on the Internet on Facebook, where he was always doing one of those projects, a farm a building, whatever, and I would chat with him. He would comment on my pictures. I would chat with him, and he would ask that I be patient with him since he could only type slowly. Whenever I saw Jan, I would ask about Spin, and her beautiful eyes would light up and tell me details.
After the shock of realizing Spin had passed, I immediately thought of his lovely wife Jan, a woman who spent all her free time with Spin. They would take an annual vacation to Disney World in Orlando, and she adored, took care of and love Spin until the moment he no longer was alive. I know she will continue to carry Spin in her heart, and will do it with much love and reverence for him.
Goodbye guys, I will miss you both.
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