Sorry to inform you.....

Sorry to inform you....
Words that hit deep...
Even if it is some one
you haven't see in years.

My ex-sister-in-law passed
away yesterday. So I am
passing the word to my kids.

I look back at the times when
we were sister-in-laws of the
lousiest of men.

Inspite of everything, there
were some good times when we
laughed. The time we decided
to see what was so great about
men smoking pipes, and couldn't
women do it too. We found out
women could smoke them, choke
on them and couldn't hold them in
our teeth without the aid of our
hands. We thought that was the
way men did it. Without hands.
After choking on the pipe tobacco,
clunking our chins with the bowl, and
huffing and puffing until we had no
air left in us to keep the dumb thing
going and lit, we decided smoking
pipes was not for us. Of course,
laughing our fool heads off, didn't
help keep them going either.

She was with me when I went into
the hospital to have my twins. Her
husband was working in Alaska.
The only time she had freedom.

She and I were together, when I
came home from the hospital
from having the twins. I stayed
my first night home with her.
The night we were woken up
by another sister-in-law, to the
news of the death of Robert
Kennedy.

I use to buy milk from her. Good
clean milk and cream on top. She
showed me how to make butter,
by rolling a large jar across the floor.

And there was the time that she laughed
at me because I had mumps in one side
of my face..... and then 10 days later she
had the full blown mumps herself.

And that is the way I would like to remember,
Willie. Not the times I hugged her as she cried.
Not the times she had black eyes. Not the times
she was in the hospital with broken ribs.
Because she "fell down the stairs by
accident" I got out....she never did.
I always wondered, what did she think
she had done to be beaten so bad, and
have to stay.

I want to remember Willie, playing the
Boogie Woogie piano. I want to remember
Willie, singing like any other western singer.
I want to remember Willie with that dang
black pipe, huffing and puffing on it to keep
it going...
God Bless, God Speed, Willie, free ..free at last...