Add-on to Last Post

My last post was about my brother-in-law.

My add-on is about my friend, Mickey, who I worked with when we first moved up here 5 and a half years ago. I got a job working at the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory in Shelburne, Vermont. It was a fun place to work, helping visitors pick out their bears, giving tours of the factory, and stuffing and sewing up bears the people could make themselves (the original "Build a Bear" theme was started there.) Mickey and I worked together most days in the retail shop, she and I being the "older" ones in a group of mostly much younger adults. She was my saving grace on many days, and it was great fun getting to know this warm and caring Vermonter who was born (almost exactly 10 years before me) and raised up in St. Albans. She told me about places to visit, best restaurants to eat at and bits and pieces about local sites, including the premier cree-mee stand where they had over 100 flavors! It's still our one and only place to go for cree-mees during the summer, and to take visitors to. After we moved up to Swanton, the commute to the Teddy Bear Factory was too long, and I quit shortly after. But Mickey and I still remained friends, meeting for lunch once in a rare while, or she would stop by wherever I was working, we exchanged Christmas cards, and I would ask about her whenever I went to the post office, where her niece worked. I few weeks ago her niece stopped into my store, and I was able to talk to Mickey's sister, and learned that her health was failing. Mickey had fought breast cancer twice, but her pain now was in her back, and they were trying to figure out what was going on...

A week ago Saturday, another person we worked with at the Teddy Bear Factory came into my store, and I was excited to see her, but one look told me what I feared. Mickey had passed away, also on July 15th, the same day as my brother-in-law. Her pain was from cancer that they found in her spinal cord, and it took her quickly. I still look for her smiling face on quiet afternoons when I'm working, or think of her when I see the Vermont Teddy Bear I have in our guest room. I shall miss her, my friend. It's been a tough month...