As you know my school reunion group are women I’ve known from age six and on.  You may also recall my friend Liz died in 2012 reducing our group to seven, and now our dear Rhonda has died as well, so now it’s the six of us.  At a loss of 25% of the group, I’d say that’s a pretty large number, and of course awful for us to lose another wonderful person.

I told her widower the story of when we were maybe in grade two or three, and Rhonda said her mom was pregnant.  I, being a particularly stupid kid, asked what’s pregnant? And Rhonda laughed her adorable evil little laugh and explained it meant she was going to have a baby.  I’m sure I would’ve proudly said to mom “Mrs. Shaw is pregnant” which would’ve elicited a gasp that a child would know such a salacious word.

At recess and lunch at Osoyoos Elementary Junior Secondary School we all played strange ball games, one of which began “one, two, three a Larry”, and you would swing your leg over the ball as you’d bounce it.  We also did rope skipping wherein a person would be at each end of a giant rope and you’d have to wait for just the right moment and then jump in without stepping on the rope.  I stunk at that.

However besides being the smartest girl in the class, Rhonda was great at the ball games, skipping, and she later played saxophone in the band.  We were cheerleaders together from grades seven to ten after which time we all had to head to Oliver for grades 11 and 12.  Rhonda and I rode the same bus as we lived north of town.

She was such a loyal friend she made each reunion: Parksville when we turned 40, Canmore at 50, Sam (Renate’s) place in Palm Springs when we turned 60, Kalamalka Lake at 65, and now she’s going to miss our 70^th next year which she would hate to do.  We know she’ll be there in spirit.

Now that Calvin has a job and is away all day it’s my job to entertain his cat Felix.  His favourite thing to do is to escape so I’ve spent quite a bit of time chasing the cat in this heat.  But he’s an indoor cat and wouldn’t know what to do with coyotes or cars.  He has a harness but the other day the little dickens got himself right out of it.

I tried to catch him for an hour, and then went “stay outside, cat”, and had to go to the store, so drove off.  All the way there and home I began imagining how I was going to tell Calvin the cat is dead, and just prayed to God he’d be there.  When I parked there was kitty under the handyman’s trailer.  I lured him downstairs with food, and slam! Cat caught.

Yes I said the handyman’s trailer.  You’ll recall in my last blog my nerves were being eroded and this continues.  He’s a super nice person, don’t get me wrong, but for someone who lives by this saying of Aristotle’s “Whosever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god,” constant presence punctuated by loud music is a no-no.

Roar!  But I have to calm down and think of Rhonda, and how she’d give anything to have her nerves jangled by Jazz Man at 90 Decibels.  We can’t seem to appreciate life until something awful happens, and then we might briefly seize the day, and then soon  enough, back to the same old, going SHUT THE XXXX UP OUT THERE.