In Memorial

We received word yesterday afternoon that a very,very dear friend of ours passed away a few days ago. We will be going to California for her memorial service this weekend. Lee Ann Mayr truely eptomized the Proverbs 31 woman but in my life she also lived out Paul's instructions to Titus for older women,"then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children...." Lee Ann took me under her wing when I first arrived in Livermore as a new bride, knowing only a couple of people in town other than my new groom. Two years later we were blessed to be able to buy the house next to theirs. She nursed me through all my pregnancies, loved on my kids, taught me to relax, to cook without every single ingredient the recipe called for. She reached out and truely cared for people who needed a helping hand and would drag me along to help too. There was always a cup of coffee and a listening ear available in Lee Ann's kitchen. Her family became my family. Holiday meals included Grandma Mayr, Grandma and Grandpa Peck, Great-grandma Woodard, her three teenagers, my three babies, our husbands, our selves, sometimes my folks or inlaws, and often a few other friends, Ed especially comes to mind. We shopped for fabric and wallpaper together, we moved furniture(usually hers when I was pregnant). She was an artist and I've been missing her eye for color as I try to pull the interior of our house together. She told me when my oldest was taking dancing lessons in college to tell him he knew how to dance cause she had danced him around as a baby. My kids would run over to visit her before our husbands left for work in the morning and often I'd get a call that they were eating breakfast there. She scrubbed my toilets when I was pregnant and pucking all the time, she cleaned my house after we'd left for a trip and left it looking like a tornado had been through, she borrowed my good dining room table when we were gone over some holiday. That one horrified my mother but actually made me feel good that we were close enough friends that she felt free to do it. Well there are years and years of memories to review and I won't do all that here, but I truely loved Lee Ann and she certainly had a tremendous positive influence on my life. She ran the good race, may she rest in peace, and may all the memories she left behind continue to spur those of us who knew her on to do good works too.