This is my friend, Tony. He lost his battle with MS a few months ago. We’ll be remembering him with a memorial service this Saturday. Tony was a charmer. A dentist by profession, but a skier, runner, biker, friend, and father extraordinaire. He volunteered for the ski patrol till he couldn’t do it anymore. I first met Tony when we moved into the house across the street from he and his family. My late mother-in-law was visiting from out of town and had a sudden dental emergency. Tony dropped what he was doing and met us in the office in the middle of the night so she could have pain relief.

Segue forward about ten years and we were both single. Tony helped me by just being my friend. He helped me do the landscaping at my house that I had built. I went to his house right after the first plane hit the towers on 9/11 and we sat and cried together as we watched them fall one by one. When his health deteriorated, he moved to the Front Range to be closer to family. We lost touch, as people are prone to do. Sometimes people just come into your life like that…for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. He was a sweetheart and the world is a little less bright without him.

I thought of him last night as I sat in the park listening to live music. It occurred to me we sat together in this exact spot 15 years ago enjoying a hot summer night of cool jazz. And I smiled with the memory. Isn’t that the best thing we can hope for? That someday, after the pain of loss has subsided, someone somewhere will think of us and smile?

God rest your sweet soul, Tony. Till we meet again….

❤️

“But the noble make noble plans, and by noble deeds they stand.”

Isaiah 32:8