Glenda...A Tribute to My Friend and Our Friendship

The Power of Lasting Connection

My beautiful friend Glenda by of course some beautiful flowers.

(It was hard to record this but I really wanted to…)

I found out on December 3rd that Susan Kathleen Glenda Winson was gone from my friendship bubble. Glenda, as she was known had fallen on September 3rd and broken her hip, complications from a degenerative muscle disease she had. She received an operation to fix it but then while in the hospital, she died of complications choking on a fig. It was the same day as my wedding anniversary. My wedding that Glenda had attended 20 years ago. 10 years prior to that is when Glenda and I met.

I was a research assistant, a job during a summer break from college. I was 20 or 21. Glenda was a nurse, 26 or 27 years my senior. We worked in a small office at St. Lukes Roosevelt Hospital on the upper west side in Manhattan. Our boss was a gastro-intestinal immunologist. It was the mid 90’s when HIV/AIDS was wreaking havoc. The doctor we worked for was a well known researcher who had uncovered how HIV was affecting the GI system. It was my job, and sometimes Glenda helped me, to sort tissues samples in a deep freezer. I also helped out with office tasks and errands. Mostly it was just exciting and rewarding to be exposed to what was cutting edge research at the time.

That was the “professional” part of our friendship…Somehow a 26 (or 27) year age difference didn’t matter to us. Glenda was a very petite and proper British woman who had moved to NYC for her husband’s job. And I was a local girl who just took the subway to work from Brooklyn. Either it says a lot about my maturity at the time, or it says a lot about Glenda’s fun and outgoing personality that we connected so well. Maybe we met in the middle. Or maybe it was also because we were both Leo’s- our birthdays only days apart.

When I was in between my comings and goings to and from Brooklyn after college, we would always meet for dinner and catch up. In the summer that included going to Shakespeare in the Park or the Philharmonic in Central Park. Glenda looooved the arts and theater. Living so close to Carnegie Hall and Broadway she went to as many concerts and performances as she could.

She also travelled the world- boy, did she travel the world. By boat or plane or a mix of both. Maybe even train sometimes too. She’d send me postcards from each place she visited. Somewhere I’m sure I have a collection of them all. She loved visiting museums and learning about all kinds of cultures when she traveled. Her understanding and respect for different people and societies was what partially fueled her insistence to speak out against social injustices and inequalities both in the US and abroad. Glenda was usually full of humor and wit, but she would become quite feisty and outspoken when she experienced or saw wrongs occurring.

Even though our friendship seemed to grow in the distance, as I was away more than I was in Brooklyn, I did happen to be home when she and her husband divorced. They had been in each other’s lives from early adulthood, and she was pretty heartbroken. I spent extra time with her during that season. After he left, she wanted to change up the apartment so I helped her paint one of the walls a different color. I think it was a shade of mauve—nothing too drastic, but just enough for her to feel change. A couple of months later was her first Christmas alone, her favorite holiday. So together we walked two blocks to West End Avenue where the evergreen trees leaned against wooden stands, grouped by sizes and types. Both of us small in stature, we chose a shorter tree and hauled it back to her building, up the elevator to the 9th floor and into her apartment.

After standing the tree up, we strung a string of lights, wrapped a link of tinsel around it, and then out came the ornament box. Actually it was many boxes if I remember correctly. So many. As she carefully unwrapped them one by one, she would tell me the story behind each of them. Every ornament had some special meaning that she delighted in telling me about. Some of the stories related to people she cared about and others explained the places where she got the ornaments from. By the end of the ornament hanging, there was barely an open place- even the back of the tree had been filled up!

Funny enough after I wrote this, I found this picture that she had posted a few years ago on Facebook. It’s almost exactly as I described!

In the coming years, I even added to her collection. One year I made her a painted glass bulb ornament, and another year I gave her a stained glass hummingbird. Some years she would e-mail me about them and once there was the actual subject heading: “Do you remember the ornament you gave me?” In the notes she’d express the happiness that seeing my ornament gave her.

At the end of our Christmas-ing “work” that evening, she made an easy dinner. Then for dessert she surprised me with some traditional English “plum” pudding and she actually put it on fire! I was quite impressed!

As some time passed from that first Christmas and the loss of her marriage, she took to a renewed spiritual life and very much held the true teachings of Jesus close to her heart. She didn’t have children and her other family was in England and so she found a nearby church that became a second family to her. And then soon after, she met her long time committed companion, Ken, who remained by her side for over 20 years.

I remember how giddy she was when she first told me about him. She was delighted to find love again. With Ken’s wonder of an intellect and love of history, they both enjoyed the arts and theater together. He also became her travel partner in earnest, journeying to countless countries. When Glenda’s legs weakened as she got older, she often explained how much she appreciated Ken knowing exactly where on her back to place his hand to help propel her forward when there was an incline in the road. He has been a doting and loving companion for all these years and I’m so happy that had each other all this time.

Glenda was always bundled in the winter, as well she should be- the cold weather experienced woman from England she was. She often wore the warmest looking mittens and she would explain to me that she got them from an Alpaca farm in Peru when she was visiting there. She also had several hot water bottles to keep her warm in bed at night. She showed them to me when I spent the night once. When she showed them to me, it was like she was introducing me to her beloved stuffies. She showed me one that had a beautiful quilted cover over it, and one that had a fuzzy cat shaped cover on it. When I had my kids she gifted me a brown bear cover for them to enjoy.

Although she seemed to adjust quite well to urban life in NYC, during our chats she would often tell me about life in England growing up as a child and young adult. She told me about her gardens and her pets. Specifically she had a cat named Lucy. A black cat that would give her “gifts”. As she told me the story (more than once) she got so excited telling me about this “gift giving” as if she was rather proud of her Lucy. The “gifts” of course were dead mice but she didn’t squirm at all, and instead delighted in recalling how it all unfolded.

Glenda loved flowers and gardens and she gladly shared that love with others. For my 50th, last summer she sent me a huge bouquet of flowers that lasted weeks! I even kept the greens in the vase with water for well over a month. The blooms and colors were just delightful… When I spoke to Ken the other day, he said as per her wishes she was cremated and her urn sits fittingly on the window ledge looking out onto the Hudson River. It was indeed a favorite scene for her. She had a lovely balcony and adorned it with planters when the weather and seasons cooperated.

…I wanted to publish this piece here about Glenda and our friendship because she was always so supportive of my writing. She read all of my writing and always replied with her encouraging insights about the subject I wrote about…I had noticed that she hadn’t sent me her usual responses the last few times but I didn’t think too much of it. When I e-mailed her for Thanksgiving last week and she didn’t respond that’s when I initially got worried. I e-mailed her again a few days later and when she still didn’t get back to me, I called both her numbers later that day. I still remembered her ground line. 212-724-4510. Our friendship of 30 years dates way before cell phones. But when I called both numbers, there was a disconnected recording. That’s when I got on Facebook and searched her name. Her cousin in England had posted about her passing. I reached out to her and she explained how they were not able to access the contacts in her phone otherwise she would have notified me…

…Glenda was an encourager of my writing, and she was also my life encourager. She’s been in my life more than she hasn’t…I will re-read her numerous e-mails to me in the years to come when I can’t call her to “hear” her voice…Glenda is the first of my nearest and dearest friends to pass. I know it’s just part of life but it does seem as if each special connection will kinda leave its own unique meaningful impression on me. Thank you Glenda for leaving your mark on me, I will always cherish its imprint.

The last time I saw her in May. The time stamp on the image was 4:44… :)

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*Glenda provided active support to those with her same disability. Here is a link describing more of her special contribution and more about the disease if you are interested. Myotonic Dystrophy.

**If you are new to me, I’d love for you to see my other writings—maybe you’ll agree with Glenda… :) Click here to see my previous posts.