Happy Birthday Gwen

Today is my good friend Gwen Walter’s 42nd birthday. Well it would have been…Gwen lost her battle with cancer nearly 10 months ago. I’m grieving for her yet again today. And I’m celebrating. Celebrating that she had a chance to live. Celebrating that I was able to be influenced by her and have her friendship in my life. How lucky for me. She left behind a wonderful family. Four wonderful kids, my kids best friends. I am thankful that I can still be around them so that I can still have a bit of her influence in my life. Her example. She was filled with faith, courage, and strength.
You know, quite often I am struck with the way Heavenly Father weaves people in and out of our lives. How the people you meet make influences on you and mold you, change you if only a bit. It reminds me of that poem/saying:

Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile, leave
footprints on our hearts and we are never, ever the same.

I have a lot of footprints on my heart. Maybe it comes from moving a lot. Maybe not. I can think of so many people who have been woven into my rug of life. For some their color last for such a short while. While others it keeps reoccurring. Some colors are vibrant and others are dull. I can remember those women who were mothers for me when mine was far away. The help they gave was invaluable. It’s funny. Just about on a daily bases I am reminded of people that have touched me. Whether it’s a smell (who can smell Warm Vanilla Sugar and not think of Shawn Hatch?), something I’m eating (yah, all those recipes had to come from somewhere.and when we’re eating them you have to think of who first introduced you to that great food…pizza dough-Melanie, Bow-tie Pasta salad-Kristen, red bell peppers-Becky, and who can’t help but think of Rachel every time they eat raw spinach or blueberries?). It happens with movies and music too. They can fly you back to memories years ago in just seconds. It even happens with words….even stupid words..like planaria…yes you know who you are. Actually the evidence of those colored threads are everywhere. The crocheted hangers, the books on the shelves (particularly those cheesy LDS romance novels). Each person, each thread, has something connected to it.
For Gwen, it’s the Willow Tree figurines, jumpers, and every time I look out my back window. It’s so hard to tie off the end of a thread and start a new color. But I am thankful to have had that beautiful color in my rug, even if it was for a short time. It’s one of the vibrant ones. One of the ones that won’t get looked over, but rather it will be paused at, reflected on, because it was one of the ones that changed the pattern of the stitch.
So, Happy Birthday my dear friend. You are being remembered today.

Gwen and me just a few weeks before she passed away

And lucky me, another vibrant color in my rug has a birthday today too. So Happy Birthday to you to my friend, Melanie…may there always be oranges to remind me of you!