Early Saturday
morning, December 23rd, the phone shrilled.
"Jane,
can you and Larry take me to the store?" my eighty-
two-year-old friend, Dorothy, asked. "I want to pick
up a few
things before my company arrives."
"We'll be
there in fifteen minutes," I promised.
Though she
suffered from many physical ailments, Dorothy
maintained a spirit of laughter and fun that infected
everyone
fortunate enough to call her friend.
Despite the
nearly thirty years that separated us, we had
become fast friends. I chauffeured her to doctor appointments,
to the store, to lunch at a small diner where she
insisted upon
treating me. All
the while, she encouraged me not to "drive like
an old lady."
"I like
to move," she said. With a prayer
on my lips and
Dorothy's hand on my elbow, urging me to go yet faster,
we
careened through intersections, earning, I am certain, a
few
choice words and gestures from other drivers.
One of
Dorothy's favorite activities during the Christmas
season was to go to a novelty store where we pushed the
buttons
of all the holiday characters, sending them into frenzied
song
and dance. No
plush Santa, stuffed snowman, or gaily dressed elf
was safe from our mischievous fingers.
Clerks and
shoppers gave us indulgent looks.
Oh, Dorothy. "I like to move." In a strange way, that could have been her epitaph. At the very least, she would have enjoyed the confused expressions on people's faces as they read it!
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