Cheryl

Cheryl



I want(ed) to be you,

your strength, your light;

I want(ed) that

to be part of me.

I dreamt, as a little girl,

not of being a princess

but of being you.

All green eyed and ready,

ready for anything and looking,

always looking, for more.

Only the brightest of spirits

can claim the same.

I want(ed) that,

to be that person,

that person I see every time

you come to mind.



* There was a opening if you will that is pasted below. My mom read it at her services.

I am at a complete loss for words and those who know me well know that is crazy unusual; I always have something to say. It is one of the many things I likened myself to Cheryl; she certainly had a lot to say.


I have a list – if you will – of the women in my life that I see as the glue, the strong ones, the ones that can do virtually anything and survive. Cheryl has always been on that list. I fancy myself on that list about 30% of the time and the other 70% look to the others on the list for inspiration.


For me, Cheryl embodied a strength that is really unexplainable. She faced things in her lifetime that would break a lesser person and handled it with the grace and skill of an Olympic Gymnast.


She came to live with us when she was eighteen. I was in awe, she listened to cool music, had the greatest white pants I had ever seen and goodness was she beautiful. I remember borrowing (and ruining) those pants when I was in Junior High School. I can still, to this day, see the pants in my mind. They were white “jeans” they had stripes like a bad set of drapes might, cream and white, and zippers clean up the middle….plus they were hers and I was, as I mentioned, in awe. I have never, to this day, slid into a pair of white jeans without thinking of her.


At my most confused times she was there, at my silliest and craziest moments she was there, from Oreo cookies to camping trips; never did she judge. I think Scotty said it best the other night; she was a “WOW”. She walked into the room (or your life if you were lucky) and you knew it for oh so many reasons.


I grew up wanting to be nothing less than my Aunt Cheryl. Today I sit and still want to be to be nothing less than my Aunt Cheryl.



I will miss her always.