TOP 'O THE MORNIN TO YA LIL

Lillian McKee and mizmollye




We were an unlikely pair. I was in my forties and married. She was in her sixties and widowed/divorced/single and we somehow connected and became great friends for three years or so while my then husband and I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. We were misplaced Louisianians and she was a transplant from North Carolina and Florida who had landed there to be near a grown son.

Completely Irish and with a lilting Irish brogue to match she was happy, loud, outspoken, and unique. She loved looking "cute", her white hair always styled to a T and her make-up and fashion trendy. She decorated her pad in Marilyn with lots of red, black and chrome. But her favorite color was Green.

After we came back home to Louisiana she stayed on in California and her son married and moved a little further away, she lost a daughter to cancer and became more alone and lonely. She survived cancer herself and had a little heart problem which led her to an assisted living facility where she had her own apartment but structured all the same. She made new friends, "old" folks she could help and befriend.

I went back once to visit and we re-kindled our very strong and old friendship. Lots of laughing, girl talk and she just blossomed. We again put on swim suits and sat at the pool tanning and drinking bloody mary's (the virgin type by then)!

I had been back home for 10 years and had also lost my husband, but we always stayed in touch a few times a year by letter and calls on holidays. I remarried my "Punkin Darlin" Mike and in 2003 we moved off to Oklahoma to help my oldest daughter, Lori get a foothold in starting a new business. Having never met him, Lillian had called us there during the Thanksgiving holidays and spoke to him a few minutes before he put me on the phone and she gave him the third degree after which telling him that he'd better be good to me or she would come over there and kick his butt!

I got a Christmas Card back in February that I had sent to her and it was stampted "not at this addresss". Thinking she had moved and perhaps to a nursing home I found a number for her son and when I called he apologized profusely for not calling me to tell me that she had died right after Christmas. It knocked the wind from my sails to know that never again would I pick up my phone to hear "Mollye me darlin...how are you me sweet friend".

Oh I miss you Lil. Happy St. Paddy's Day. I can just picture you wearing the green in a big cloud of blue.