End of the Year Thoughts: VIVIAN

Today I heard from my friend Vivian! We have known each other since we were young teens! She is one of those people who sticks by you and never acts judgemental! I love her! I never tell her enough! She is a great gal and she likes her coffee with lots of sugar ! She never married but had a huge crush on a guy named Ed for most of her youth! Vivian lives in the same house she grew up in and shares it today with her younger brother. They lost their mom this past March. No one told me. I am sad. I loved Jessie. She was a hard working awesome lady. When Vivian's dad passed away she and her mom were blessed to travel to Rome and meet the pope, who at that time was John Paul II. It was one of those once in a lifetime trips and they were tickled to be there! Vivian went on to survive ovarian cancer. I can not even imagine that pain! I have survived three major neurosurgery's but cancer! I think Vivian is a hero. I love her like a sister. Once she and my own sister Mary held me while I was sick! We had gone out to a club, ah... the old days....and I ordered a Long Island Iced Tea! Not realizing it was "happy hour" I drank two of those and could barely stand up! I remember my older brother telling me "What were you thinking, you had alcohol poisoning?" He explained the fact that my drink contained enough hard liquor to tranquilizer a big guy like him! At the time I weighed around 120 lbs. soaking wet! Ha Ha! So Vivian held my head and my hair as my sister drove us to her house. She told our folks we were going to watch movies and those girls cared for me never leaving my side! Is that a friend or what?  Granted my sweet sis cared for me but she was blood so I thought she had to! Vivian knows some of the darkest secrets that I have! I trust her like I trust God and since the two of them have known my secrets since we were teens I figure they are not going to rat me out now! Hee Hee! Vivian worked for the Holiday Inn alongside her mom for many years. They were "laundry ladies". Talk about an honorable and thankless job! Both my late mother and my favorite aunt Ang worked in the laundry too except they worked for a different laundry.
Did you know that Vivian means Vivacious and Lively? It is Latin and I am sure her mom must have had a 6th sense that Vivian would be a firecracker! She is fun and lively and she always makes you feel comfortable. She is of Mexican heritage and she is one incredible lady.
Today I am sad because I was not there for her. Now I will make up for it. I will  be the friend I once was long ago. I will always treasure Vivian and I will visit with her and we will reminisce about her folks and particularly her mom because Jessie was a quiet, sincere  and beautiful lady. She had a passion for her faith and I think after the untimely death of her own husband she she kept her faith and was so courageous caring for her family. She was one of the kindest ladies I knew. I will help Vivian carry on the beautiful legacy of her mom and her dad. I am hoping she has lots of photos tucked away so she can make a memory book.
Is there someone in your life you need to reconnect with? Don't hesitate, do it today. Join me by writing a personal note or letter to them. Let's bring back the old fashioned writing letters and cards like we did in the past. I truly believe it is an incredible way to communicate with those we love and cherish.
When I visit Vivian I will post photos. I am sorry I can't get to my photos from my oldest daughter Noelle's wedding. I have a great shot of Vivian alongside our mutual friend Kathy O'Gane!
Ah...Kathleen O'Gane, that is another story for another day! Stay tuned!

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.
Elbert Hubbard

A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity.
Robert Hall
 
A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.
Pam Brown

A hug is like a boomerang - you get it back right away.
Bil Keane

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world.


Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
C. S. Lewis

Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
Muhammad Ali


I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
Katherine Mansfield

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
Thomas A. Edison

I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.
Robert Brault

Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.
Samuel Pepys

Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
Elbert Hubbard

Never have a companion that casts you in the shade.
Baltasar Gracian

Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.
Plautus

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
Honore de Balzac

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
George Santayana

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.
Margaret Lee Runbeck

Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.
Francesco Guicciardini

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
William Blake

The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
Elbert Hubbard

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.
Henri Nouwen

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Henry David Thoreau

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
Henry David Thoreau

The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?
Eugene Kennedy

The sincere friends of this world are as ship lights in the stormiest of nights.
Giotto di Bondone

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.
Thomas Aquinas

Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats