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My Ode To Joy
my eulogy for a good friend
My friend Joy died recently. Her daughter shared her death on Facebook and I was shocked. We hadn’t talked or messaged in a bit but that was usual. She was diagnosed with cancer and died a few weeks later. Now we can’t talk or message and that left me with odd and very sad feelings….But my brain did its usual and I awoke with this idea for a post.
I met Joy right after I moved to Vermont and we became good friends. But like with so many of my friends, getting together tends to slip easily away — even if we live near each other — it’s called “life intervening.”
The town in Vermont, Brattleboro, where I lived was/is an art town and Joy was the coordinator for a monthly program called Gallery Walk — which took place the first Friday of each month — yes even mid-winter! What Joy and I did was to have a monthly “date” on the first Friday of every month. I enjoyed the studios and she knew all the artists as she was the event coordinator — so for the years I lived there, we had our monthly date.
Joy was a very upbeat person with an interest and expertise in music, the arts, graphics, gardening, pets — that’s why we became friends — we shared similar interests.
Through Joy, I met most if not all the artists in town and loved chatting with them about their art. And the arts varied, even with the…
