Opal

 Over the years during my life here in Pueblo, I have had a myriad of friends.  Of course, I still do!  One of them was Opal.  Kenny and I were newlyweds when I entered the phase of my life that Opal would be an integral part of for many years.  Back then she was a feisty little red-haired woman who lived in a small one-bedroom apartment behind King Soopers on Northern.  I never knew her to drive, although I assume she did at one time.

She had two sons and a daughter.  During the course of our friendship I became friends with all of them.  It was early in our friendship that she had gone to King Soopers, which was within easy walking distance and came home with a few groceries.  She tripped and fell into the concrete step in a face plant.  Poor little thing had two black eyes and a very fat lip for several weeks after that.  Still she lived alone.

Over the course of the next several years we remained friends.  I must confess that I sometimes let life get in the way of our friendship, but that is how life is.  Kenny was working out of town a lot and I liked to go stay with him in places like Denver, Grand Junction and I certainly enjoyed trips to Paonia and the drive there through the Black Canyon.  With him working out of town most of the time, life here in Pueblo suffered.  Course Sam and Susie were still at home until Sam went off to college.  

It was after Kenny passed and the kids were grown and gone, that I finally got to spend more time with Opal.  We attended the same church where her son played the piano.  Later he hired me to clean his home and spend time with his mother.  When he went out of town for meetings some where I would bring her to my house for the night and then take her home for the day so she could "putter". 

To say Opal and I were friends would be an understatement.  It was more like an invisible bond of sisterhood.  As she grew older, she became more forgetful, as did I.  We would return to my house  for the night and neither one of us could remember if we closed the garage to the town house, so we would load into the car and drive back over there.  It was always closed.  We finally had a piece of paper in the car upon which I would write the time we seen the door close firmly.

She had stomach aches fairly regularly and Chuck and I both thought it was mostly her imagination.  She used a lot of Alka Seltzer.  And then one day she was in so much pain she could not stand it and ended up in the hospital.  The diagnoses was that a scar from her appendectomy many years ago had grown and closed off her intestine.  Nothing could be done.

I miss that feisty little used to be red head.  I miss her son who passed just this past year.  But you know what?  Life is made of our memories.  And the best part of memories is that we can tailor them to fit our  needs at the time.  Opal was one in a million.  I loved her and she loved me.  The bond may be ethereal, but it is not forgotten.  When I think of Opal I remember all her endearing qualities and I hope some day some on will look back on me with only half the tenderness that I remember little Opal!

Rest in peace my little friend.