Today there is heartache

Today, Valentine Day, there is heart ache, especially when Brie posted a photo of our wedding day , 41 years ago.
It suddenly sunk in, I saw these two people smiling, laughing, oh! how very happy we were.
My two best California friends were there. Kathy Hermle, the cut up, she was in full force with her "blue" jokes.
We did not tell too many of color jokes in 1969, but she did!
We were a good pair, she the outgoing full force woman, I (then) the mousy one. I remember when one day Sabrina started to complain that she had to go to the bathroom in a restaurant.
Ladies room had a line, Sabrina started to cry, Kathy grabbed her by the arm and
ran into the men's room with her.
She told the guy's in there that she was a nurse (she was) and that she had seen worse and in she went into a stall with my crying daughter. I was left outside and tried to find a place to hide.
My friend had a horrible battle with breast cancer. Took several years of pain to take her away. I wanted to go and say goodbye and she said "No, do not see me this way, remember me when..."
I do. I have her photo by my desk and I often smile on how we would fight at the Goodwill for the best bargains. It was a riot.
She was my ex husband's bosses wife.
When she found out the ex was getting remarried to a very young gorgeous Swede who was very pregnant....she wanted to take my girls in rags by the church entrance.
She was going to yell to the guest that he had not paid for his children.
I shudder at the thought. Of course , I stopped her. It did not stop her to put old blue cheese in his lunch box day after day.

April Lee was my other friend, tiny, fragile, had a hard life before she met her husband, artist George Lee.
He was older and he let her have anything she wanted, she loved animals more than people. She had a goat in the house, several cats, a dog and whatever stray she could find.
She and I opened up a second hand clothing store in Santa Cruz and there I met my Bob.
April much wiser to the world than I was told me that Bob was gay.
I said: How do you know?
She answered: He runs like a girl.
He did and it is funny to watch.
Gay he was not.
She was the quiet one at the wedding, her husband was the cut up.
He had been a child star in some movie, very well known movie which I forget now. His father had worked on sets all his life so little George went to work as an actor.
George past on and after he went April joined him also with breast cancer.
That was years ago but she did not get the help she needed because she was broke. The old story about insurance and the right care.
Her life was not easy, not by any stretch of the imagination.

So seeing my wedding photos I am thinking of all the people who make up the tapestry of our life-shawl.
My shawl is scratchy in parts, soft and lovely in pastel weaving in the middle and so far it is getting a tiny bit scratchy again. C'est la vie.
Would I redo my shawl, tear it all up and start weaving again? Not on your life.
It is what it is.
The scratchy parts made me look for something softer .
Happy Day!!!!!