My Childhood Friend's Sister Died

...and I couldn't attend the funeral in Boston. So I penned out my heart's thoughts:

Sometimes on the nightly news we'll hear a deep voiced newscaster say something like, "Their passing is the end of an era" and we'll all nod in our hearts.
With the passing of our dear sister, mother, wife, and friend it feels like the end of "cool".
Our street Norboure Boulevard in the 50s was a sweet little universe. Katie Roach was my best friend.
The Queen was her mother "Momma Jean" and the fairytale princess was Katie's sister Susie. Susie was a teenager and we were elementary school groupies to her and her entourage. Her life was full of big crepe paper flowers and cheerleader uniforms and rock and roll on the radio.
We knew the names of the cool kids at Eastern High School and to even mutter those names out loud made us cool by association. To us handsome boy-men like the "Jays". Jay Brewer and Jay Paxton made Bobbie Darren pale by comparison.
Katie and I would spy from the other room as the cool kids came and went through the front door. Off to ball games and dances and their grown up lives.
We watched Susie float down the aisle at Beargrass Christian Church and afterward savored all of the exotic delicacies in the church reception hall. So cool!
Susie was paving the road for us and showing us what a young wife and mother looked like. Oh, the tenderness and glamour she brought to the titles. We were eager students.
Along came Jay, and David, and Lucy. Absolutely the most darling children ever because they were hers. A chance to baby sit was considered an honor and we would often relive and repeat all of the adorable things they had done and said.
Katie and I have been life long students of Susie's brand of cool. We copied her decorating style and envied her casual but elegant beauty.
Did she know she had so much sway in many people's lives? I think not. It was not her style to think more highly of herself and that sweet humility drew in all of us wannabes.
It was a gift to watch her from behind the cracked doors of life. She taught many things; perseverance, beauty, loyalty, but the one that first comes to mind is cool.