Today would have been my cousin Peggy's 84th birthday. She became a resident of Heaven on December 7, 2020; exactly 54 years to the day after our sweet grandma, "Mammy," passed away.
Our mothers were sisters, and she was my only first cousin. The family I grew up in was small. My mom's one sister had one child, and my parents only had two. My brother died many years ago, and now Peggy is gone. I'm the only one left from our generation.
It seems odd that I am in the same generation as my brother, who was fifteen years older than me, and my cousin, who was eighteen years older than me. I was a late and unexpected addition to the family, no where near the ages of her and my brother, who grew up together.
She was more like a second mother or a favorite aunt than my cousin. I loved spending time with her. I have fond memories of getting to go with her on errands when I was very young.
Peggy took me to my first movie when I was 9 years old. Disney's Cinderella came out that year, 1964, and we went to the Malco on Garrison Avenue in Fort Smith to see it. Afterwards, we went to Pizza Hut for my first taste of pizza.
When I was seventeen, she and her family went to Six Flags and she asked my mom if I could go. Amazingly, my mom let me go! (I was very sheltered). Her son, who is four years younger than me, was thirteen and she turned us loose to go and ride anything we wanted to with instructions to meet at a certain place for lunch.
Two teenage cousins loose in Six Flags. We had such fun! I think we rode every ride twice! And of course, she didn't have to ride stuff with him! Brilliant. She got sick on rides, and I never have. That was a great game; an all star memory that I still think of as the most fun I had ever had at that point in my life.
Like I said, I was over-protected, and on that trip I got to be a teenager just having fun.
After I was grown and married with children of my own, we didn't hang out quite as much. After my mother passed away suddenly in 1996, though, we became close again. We went shopping a lot, one of her favorite pastimes. I have never been one to really enjoy shopping, but Peggy made it fun.
Always, without fail, after a couple of hours she would announce that she needed some coffee, and off we'd go in search of somewhere to have a mid-afternoon snack. I think this is why I always have to stop and have coffee or a Coke and some kind of snack when I'm doing serious shopping, like at Christmas.
Once not long after my mother died, we drove to Little Rock to shop in a bigger and better mall. We had such fun on that trip! We each bought a new wallet, because we decided we needed to become more organized. We cleaned out our purses and put all our wallet contents in our new wallets. It may not sound fun, but it was to us. Looking back, I know she was grieving as much as I was for my mother. It was so like her to find a fun way to help us both mourn the loss we had just experienced. She was very close to my mom.
Maybe about a year before she had a stroke in 2012, we went on one last shopping trip. I didn't know it was the last, and it was for the best that I didn't. I had bought my house a couple of years earlier, but she hadn't bought me a housewarming gift she said. So she bought me a lamp for my living room. Of course, we had coffee and dessert, and I believe it was Denny's where we had our mid-shopping trip refreshments.
So, happy birthday in heaven, Peggy. You were not only family, you were a great friend to me. You had a gift for making a little shopping trip into a great adventure. We usually didn't buy a lot, but the memories I have are the treasure anyway.
<3
