Saturday 11 April 2015

FRIENDS WHO HAVE DIED & THE SADNESS OF DELETING THEIR CONTACT DETAILS..

Having got the new mobile phone and transferred the contact details over from her old one, which she has had for many a year, she noticed that several had been duplicated. So, after supper, last night she went through her contacts. The task seemed to go on for ages, for she keeps up with suppliers because either they are friends or still uses their companies for the odd bit of business.

Most details were easy to keep or delete. However, the deleting of one's much beloved friends, who have died, details was not an easy task. It seemed so final.. yes, of course, we know that are not 'here' anymore. But it was a sad thing to delete entries for these people.

Moley**.. aka treasured and adored friend whose real name was Suzan Brewster Sams.

They met in London in October 1994. Suzan and her husband, Lewis Reeve Sams Jr, whom she equally adored, were here for ten days and they met through a mutual friend. They lived in Pine Bluff, Arkansas but had spent most of their married life in New Orleans. Susan was born in Pine Bluff where her grandfather had been Shefiff and Lewis was from Atlanta.

She stayed with them several times, either in their charming home which had been built by Susan's father or up in their house at Hot Springs.. that was an amazing place! How she loved the times they spent up there, mostly on the lakes.

They met Bill and Suzan, whose sense of humour was legendary.. took one look, rolled her eyes and said in a faint voice "oh my.. now I understand". They also met another couple who lived here in London for many years, Gayle and Norman Matson.

The six of them had a couple of evenings here in London which she will probably never forget! One night, after a delicious dinner, they ended up at Les Ambassadeur in Hamilton Place ~ a fancy private Casino ~ where Bill and Lewis both proceeded to 'take' the club for very significant amounts of money and being wise gambling owls, they took their winnings, gathered their friends and left!

Lewis died in 2006.. he developed a brain tumour and was gone.. so suddenly that his family and friends were all stunned. Suzan had had a heart operation in the 70's and been given 'dirty' blood.

She wrote a chatty email to her Moley telling her stuff and asking how she was. To her horror and great sadness, she received an email from Austin, Suzan's son, saying that he had just buried his mother.

She died in 2012, on the ninth nniversary of Bill's death.. oi vey.. She left a son, Boothe Austin Haley. Poor Austin, what a dreadful email for him to have to write. She's found a couple of photos of his mama, taken at our home, which she needs to copy and send to him in Nashville.

Last Christmas she opened a card from Gayle Matson, she and Norman moved to Chicago in the early to mid 90's, they maintained regular contact and whenever they were in each others cities, would spend time together.

Gayle's cards had always given her lots of news and included a photo of her family, the parents, their son Hans together with his wife Holly and their three children. This one was a shocker.. for Norman was not in the photo but there WAS a photo of him on his obituary card. Somehow she had not got the sad news of his death the previous January.. it was very final act deleting Norm's email address and changing their address details.

One day last year she was out with friends and met a man with a name she recognised, she asked him if his father had been a racing (car) fan, the man nodded and asked her how she knew his father.

She told him that she had met him several times at Silverstone with an old friend, Russell Palmer, another Ferrari fan. He smiled and said "I knew Russell really well, his death was such a loss".. "LOSS!" she cried "What do you mean, has Russell died?".. he sighed and said "Oh dear, another person I have to give the sad news to, yes, Russell died in September of 2011, obviously Lynda didn't write to you and tell you the news either, I am so sorry".

So Russell's Boca Raton and French addresses together with his email address have been deleted, they met in '83 through 'Skip' Mueller, a mutual friend who had worked with Prince 'Stash' Radziwill, and she had worked for him at Diesel & Gas Turbine Publications for a year in the late 80's.

Last was our friend Marina Orpin (Valmar Antiques).. oh dear, oh dear. The death of this most extraordinarily active and very vibrant woman came as a massive shock to the many people who adored her. She died in the night of July 4th last year. She has had the task of telling lots of people this sad news as her family did not tell anyone and only the immediate family and a tiny handful of local friends were at her funeral.

Luckily we have the memories of all the blissfully happy times we spent with these people.

It has been a very slow start to today, silly her picked up a new book late last night and couldn't put it down, she eventually finished it and turned out the light at just past three of the morning clock! I had, meanwhile, been asleep for hours, happily zzzing behind my curtain through which the light does not come, thank goodness!


So she's got to 'Rock-n-Roll' and I will doze until she comes back with 2.5 metres of bleached calico.

Toodle-pip to you all..

GeeGee Parrot.
April 11th, 2015.
PostScript: Suzan earned the nickname Moley** as she 'would go to ground' and not communicate when she was, either very busy or feeling sad and blue. This happened, as you can imagine, when the dirty blood started to cause her to be extremely unwell. Hence Moley, for Moles go underground and disappear! Then she would re-appear and catch up with you. She is very sorely missed by a huge amount of people.

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