The Connie I Know

I have so many scattered memories about Connie that I couldn't put them all here. But here are a few.

As Kendall said, one of the best is when Connie (and I hear also Dot and, I suspect, probably Mike too) decorated our car after our wedding. I think they stuffed it with balloons, too. I didn't witness it happening, but I can just imagine Connie dreaming this up and getting everyone to participate, cackling all the way. That was and always will be her personality.

I'll never forget that Connie specifically asked me to make sure we played Achy Breaky Heart at our wedding so she could dance to it. Well, we didn't have any music at all at our wedding (we were just starting out and, thus, poor), but she didn't hold that against us. I personally don't like that song, but whenever I hear it I think of Connie and wish that we'd played it so we could have seen her do a line dance. Country and Western dancing has always been her favorite thing, even throughout her alzheimer's when she had regressed to a teenager. And if we had, I'm sure she would have gotten EVERYBODY to join in.

I'll always remember when I visited San Antonio on a business trip and got a chance to see her and how much she had changed after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She had forgotten everything after her teenage years by then, and she didn't recognize me as her nephew anymore. Or so I thought. There was a brief moment, just a matter of seconds really, where she looked at me and said, "Gosh, you sure do look like your mom." The she returned to teenage Connie. This taught me that people with Alzheimer's don't forget everything. It's just all jumbled up. Someone asked me today if I think Connie is still there underneath all the "static," and I can honestly say that I think she is. I think there's still hope for others for a cure -- not just to prevent it, but to reverse it.

I remember how Connie would always pick on my mom for liking butter, and would tell a story about how as a kid she got a whole tub of butter and started eating it under the table. I don't know if Connie ever witnessed this since she's younger than my mom, but she sure enjoyed telling the story! She'd go on and on about "Betty and her butter!" followed by a pantomime of eating butter straight out of the container. If you ever did something that was even slightly embarassing and Connie heard about it, you could be sure that she would tell that story to everyone. But if she did, you didn't feel singled out in a bad way. It was a kind of honor.

So this gets to my favorite memory of all. When Connie was working at Avis (or was it Alamo then?), Ricky Shroder from that 1980s sitcom Silver Spoons rented from them. She got to process the return, and could not stop talking about how he completely trashed the car. I don't remember all the details, but she did, and it sounded like it was pretty disgusting. Connie would have made a good People Magazine writer.

I also remember going to Connie and Mike's house as a kid at Christmas, where you could watch all the HBO you wanted. Cable was still pretty new and, as an Air Force family, we only had basic. Not at Connie and Mike's! I don't know how many precious hours of my life I was allowed to waste watching every movie imaginable, even some rated R flicks, but we kids sure didn't complain.

That's what it was like to have Connie around. As she slips away I'm trying not to be sad, but to celebrate her life because she was a woman who embraced life at every step. I think the best thing we can learn from this is that life and health are precious. Enjoy what you have when you have it, and laugh. That is what she did, and still does all the way to this moment. She has a happy, joyous heart.