Friendship Star

I was excited that my contributor copies of the anthology I wrote for, arrived in the mail this weekend. I had written about a woman I met back when I lived in Grand Blanc, MI. I had been assigned to write an article on her and when I did the interview (over the phone), I felt a real connection to her. A month or two later, she called one of the editors to see if she could get more copies of the article. I happened to be at that office near Flint, MI that day for the Christmas party, so I offered to drop them off. I ended up staying for hours since she had made dinner for me in the hopes I'd stay. After that, we became fast friends and spent a lot of time together. She told me about living in the South and the hardships she went through because of the racism in those days. We shared so much and had so much fun together despite our 40-some year age difference. I was devastated when she told me she didn't think she had a lot of time left because of heart disease. I learned so much from her and losing her was one of the hardest things I've had to deal with. I can only hope that I captured the kind of person she was in my essay so that people can learn from her the way I was blessed to have done.