What a difference a day makes

Hi
this column is for my dear friends who lost Betty at 51 to the dreaded devil- cancer

What a Difference a Day Makes
Every day it seems there are things that tick me off: dogs using my yard, traffic on the beltline, growling co-workers, etc. I could go on. There are also things that please me every day.
But the day that the circle of life takes its last turn for someone that has touched my life, none of those things matter very much. In fact, I feel guilty for letting superficial things get to me. I have been feeling this guilt all week.
After all, what is important in this life? Life itself, and how we choose to live it. We do have a lot of choices. The rest of it is the luck of the draw.
And so it was with Betty. Illness got her. Her luck gave out long before her feisty spirit. But in the end, for us all, we must complete the circle of life.
She was not very big, a lot closer to 50 than 60. Yet size and age does not count when a husband loses his wife, children lose their mother, grandchildren no longer have their grandma, and a sister’s best friend is gone. A father loses yet another child.
This is not an obituary, not a sad story. It is a remembrance of a nice person. What is the best thing you can say about a person in one word. I think nice. I would like to be remembered as being a nice person. I miss the boat on many different levels. But not Betty.
Everyone knows she loved cats. Her sister tells of Bootsie, her first cat when she was a kid. Her uncle urged her dad to let her have the cat. "It’s just an old Tom cat," he said. Well, that cat kept having litters of kittens. So began the love of cats.
She was nice, sometimes to a fault. The story goes that about the same time Bootsie was populating the neighborhood, she had a shoebox with holes in it, and wouldn’t tell what was in it. Finally it was discovered that it housed a mouse! Even nice to mice.
I knew her when she was a kid. What always happens, before you know it, the kids grow up and have kids of their own. Over the years, it was "Hi, how are you?". That was about it.
Until she fell ill. I went to visit. Her husband offered whatever I wanted out of their big garden, and they invited me to dinner. I was treated like family. It was like the years had never passed.
She didn’t want people to know about any difficulties. She never wanted to "bother" anyone. But I don’t think she would mind me writing this. I do if for her family. And if it was for them, she would be all for it.

Today I’m making some choices. You can speed past me on the beltline, walk your dog through my yard, and growl in the workplace. Today I choose to enjoy the sun coming up and shining on the new fallen snow, marvel at the full moon shining on the lake, and remembering a very nice person.
Today there is no recipe. Rather, a poem that gave me peace at a time when I needed it the most. The inscription says, "Inspired by the poetry of Russia."

we think of those companions
who traveled by our side down life’s road,
let us not say with sadness
that they left us behind,
but rather say with gratitude
that they once were with us.