My Friend Sharon

     Sharon would be the first to say each day is to be treasured and lived as fully as possible.  She told me this just last week as she prepared to have a heart ablation procedure.  Sharon reminded me to do everything I wanted to do, " like a bucket list," she said.  "We are a couple of old broads now and it's getting damned hard to deal with all these physical problems."  She was referring more to my upcoming surgery than her procedure which was supposed to be a fairly easy outpatient situation designed to get rid of disturbing rapid heartbeats she had been fighting for several months.  She had been in and out of doctor's offices, tried all the medications suggested but was exhausted from lack of sleep and side effects from the medicines.  She was confident about the outcome of her surgery, but worried about mine.

     Sharon never recovered consciousness once the ablation procedure began.  She had cardiac arrest, massive brain damage and died four days later. I am deeply shocked, saddened and already miss her terribly. I expect her to call me on the phone any minute to discuss our next shopping and lunch-out excursion, another idea for a trip, a movie she enjoyed, a politician she couldn't stand or one of her many social activities.

     Sharon and I moved to Sonoma six years ago and met through our local "Newcomers Club."   We became instant friends, discovering we were born one week apart.  Our lives had been very different until we arrived in Sonoma. She was a San Francisco liberal, animal lover, world traveler, single-all-her-life, career woman and I was a Texas conservative, married-all-my-life, career woman with children, and grandchildren. She needed a "roomy" (the name she called me for the next five years) so I joined her and three of her life-long friends on a four-week European cruise holiday.  Like everything that Sharon did, it was first-class, perfect.  We had such a great time that for the next two years, we followed up with week long spa trips to central California.  

     Sharon was always generous with her time and energy serving on numerous civic boards.  She was brilliant, opinionated, great fun and an excellent cook and hostess.  Her home and garden were "magazine" beautiful, and she shared everything she had liberally with her many friends.  

     Sharon Durbin, you will be missed!