Our Friend Denise Cooper - - See you later!

I met Denise when this Collin Community Corner group started. I noticed this woman named Denise the Accounter, who always encouraged each and every writer in the group to connect and communicate. Denise was always welcoming to the new people in the group and she was instantly likable. She was like a warm blanket wrapped around you when you were at your lowest. You could feel Denise’s spirit in her emails to us. She was helpful, loving, and kind to everyone who came her way. She and I began to write personal emails and send funny forwards to one another. Sometimes there were serious moments we needed to talk to a friend about. I know she befriended everyone and had a real personal interest in each of us. She was discreet and you felt you could tell her anything.

She was a good weather woman. Whenever the sleet was pelting against her window, we knew it. If it was raining she told us. Snow, we knew how much in her corner of the world was accumulating. Denise and I loved to tell everyone about the weather as though no one knew about weather stations on television! In fact, I think we all have that tendency. If it is hot, we say it’s hot today. If it is cold, we say it is cold or snowing or whatever is happening outside because we want to connect with one another even when there is nothing but the weather to talk about.

Denise loved animals - - mostly horses and cats. Those are the animals she talked about most of all. She loved to eat at Bill Smith’s – Gravy and Biscuits. She loved Fuddruckers hamburgers, and she loved Richard’s recipe for Banana Bread. We could smell it vicariously when she baked it. Then I had to bake a loaf as well. How many more of you did the same? You could almost hear her humming as she waited for the prize. There was so much more to Denise - - so much. She had many interests and loved the outdoors; flowers, gardens, sunrises and sunsets. She loved us, she loved her family and she trusted everyone. She loved with abandon.

Denise and I were of the 60 Club and wondering what we would do the rest of our lives. Well, Denise went on home to be with the Lord and she doesn’t have to wonder about what she is going to do the rest of her life now. She is walking with the angels, her loved ones and others gone on before us. Denise is not crippled with pain nor worried about tomorrow. While her smiling face and wonderful laughter is not with us any longer her spirit of love is still here and she will not be forgotten by those of us whose lives she touched during her lifetime. Denise we celebrate your life today in the way you would have wanted us to and girl, we are missing you!