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THE FUNERAL OF A FRIEND WE NEVER KNEW
Today was a different day for Deborah and I…let me now review…
We decided to attend a funeral of a person we never knew…
To understand our reasoning…why this is not as crazy as it appears…we must take you back in time a little…back 14 and 1/2 years.
That’s when our granddaughter Ava was born…we made a plan we couldn’t resist…we would purchase a charm bracelet that, one day, she will wear upon her wrist.
The idea is to add a charm each year…representing a time, a place…a scene…we keep the bracelet with us…until she turns sixteen.
We found a jeweler, her name is Kim, we liked the tattoos she had on her arm.
We told her the story of Ava’s bracelet and she said she’d be happy to attach the charm.
The first charm turned out beautifully…Kim’s expertise as a jeweler was quite clear…so we decided to take Ava’s bracelet and new charm back to her each year.
Now every year around the same time…just as we did the year before…we show up with bracelet and charm in hand…in front of Kim at her jewelry store.
We talk about Ava and how quickly our children and grandchildren grow…then Deborah and Kim get together to decide where the charm should go.
In the 14 years we’ve been doing this…as one year into another blends…we ceased to be jeweler and customers…and along the way we became friends.
I find it difficult to explain…as the reasons are often unclear…how a friendship can form with someone we see only once or twice a year…
But isn’t that the thing about friends…the thing that gives friendship its flair…You don’t have to see them often…to know that they are there.
We stopped by to pick up a ring Kim was fixing for Deborah the other day…and her emotions…she was unable to hide…through tears she could not control she told us her only son had died.
We did not know her son…never met him in these 14 years…
but there is something about a friendship…when a friend cries you can feel her tears.
So that’s how we ended up in the back of a church…
sitting in the very last pew….
there to support a friend…
at the funeral…
of a person we never knew.
