Cecile.
How to even begin to describe the crushing loss of one of your oldest friends— really the first best friend you ever had? I learned a few moments ago of the passing of my best friend in high school days, whose family home was truly my other home in those days, whose parents were so critically important in my very young years, her Mom always serving up precious sweets and treats in that huge kitchen of hers and her Father — Justice Sam—very possibly the single role model who led me to a life in the law later in life.
She attended Sacred Heart Academy in New Orleans and I, of course, remained in our small town on the Bayou in South Louisiana, but we saw each other on the weekends, times I would enjoy that lovely, gracious home of her family- and, most of all, her family!
Little could I have known what that home and that family would come to mean to me but as the years, the decades, went stealthily by, they — and the aromas and the laughter and the fun of that large kitchen— meant more to me than I could have ever imagined in those happy days.
Cecile was my vehicle into culture, learning, the larger world, and she was one of the kindest, most generous, most caring persons I have ever had the inestimable honor of knowing.
Some who read this may justifiably feel the figures set out here are a bit exaggerated for the benefit of good story-telling. The truth is that those indelibly imprinted days in Cecile’s Mom’s huge kitchen took place in the years between 1948 and 1952, when we all went on to bigger (?) and better (?) things in the great world beyond.
A few days ago, I received a letter from my friend Cecile sharing some news about mutual friends which, at our age, was not of good cheer. Our Boston Terrier puppy managed to grab on to it and proceeded to do what puppies to to scraps of paper like that. I managed to salvage it before he finished it off and planned to scan it and email it to my friend with a note to the effect that I had saved her treasured letter from certain destruction!
Alas, Dear Friend, that will not happen.
Remembering my dearest and longest good friend Cecile. How much better the world would be if we all had known and cherished the like of her in our life.
Farewell, good and lifelong friend.
Rest in Peace, Dear Friend, Cecile.