Warning. This is not a post about sports. It is, but its not.
It's not a breakdown of the upcoming Super Bowl XLIV, a spring training preview, a mid-season NBA review or a Tiger Woods where for art thou piece.
This is a post about love, life, family and passing. So please, if youre not in the mood to shed a tear, turn away now. I wont mind. But if you do feel like celebrating the life of someone very special, by all means read on.
Ill wait while you get some tissue.
My best friends mother passed away last week. This is a woman who was my mothers best friend for forty years, a woman who helped raise me. This is a loving, caring soul who had a profound impact on my life.
When I was only a few years old, we lived in Freehold, New Jersey. Yes, the home town of one Bruce Springsteen.
One morning, out of the blue, a school bus crashed into the side of our house. Miraculously, nobody was injured, but from that accident came several lifelong friendships. A woman came over to my house that day and asked if there was anything she could do to help in our time of need. Natalie and my mother had been best friends ever since. Forty years of ups an downs, laughter and tears, good times and bad.
Years after the bus crash, mom and I were living in Manhattan, but the cost of living in the city was too much for a struggling, single journalist to afford. It was Natalie who once again came to our rescue, taking us in despite the fact that she herself was broke.