Sissy

She had more names than most members of the royal family, starting with two first names and accumulating the rest from a Catholic baptism, two dads, and five husbands. Born in the last year of the 40s, she grew up in the 50s, was a teenager in the 60s (who got to see the Beatles live in New Orleans), a mom in the 70s, a divorcee in the 80s (a couple of times) and finally settled down in the 90s and 2000s as a hot shot real estate agent. 

Nothing came easy for her and certainly nothing stayed easy. She had chips on her shoulders a lot of times and not much of a filter. A Scorpio through and through, she sometimes had a harsh sting. She wasn't cuddly. She wasn't always easy to love. But she was my big sister until I lost her in early December. It was way too soon for us but put an end to a long time of pain and suffering for her. 

She got a brief little obituary on a funeral home website, but no funeral -- yet. One day this summer her husband Nick and I and whatever family chooses to gather will send her off the same way we said goodbye to Mama, on the banks of the Mississippi River. But since I have this little space and a knack for words, I figure I owe it to her to remind the world that she was here for 73 years and 44 days.

Officially, she was Jo Lee Ann Delanuville Lyons Saunier Miller Catton Bonura LeBlanc. But, to me, she was just Sissy -- my much older, wiser, grumpier, hell-hath-no-fury sister.  She was born to a teenage mother who didn't have a clue what she was doing, but, thankfully, there was a set of grandparents there to pick up the slack and make sure she survived. Mama named her after her own grandmother, Lena Josephine, but reversed -- Jo Lee. Back then, you had to have a saint's name to be baptized, so Mama added the Ann.

Her father, a Navy man, came and went in a flash. Then my dad came along and she started using his name because no one could spell the other one (Still can't. It's even wrong in her obituary.) Then she got married. And again. And again. And again. And again. But she kept the name of her third husband because it was the one she used to establish herself as a hot shot real estate agent in Baton Rouge. She also refused to be called Jo Lee LeBlanc. It was too much like the Cajun song Jolie Blanc.

She became a big sister to our brother, Rhett, when she was 7 years old and spent the next several years trying to keep him alive. You see, Rhett was a bit of a daredevil who lived his life on the edge, even as a toddler. It was Sissy who interrupted mom's card game to inform her that Rhett was on the roof. "Tell him to get down," mom replied calmly, knowing if she went out there she would scream, scare the bejeezus out of him and probably make him fall. He got down safely on his own.

She had six more years before I came along and I'm certain she was not thrilled when mom and my dad announced my impending arrival. I was kind of an oops baby, conceived shortly after my mother recovered from a serious bout of rheumatic fever that nearly killed her and left her with a profound heart murmur. 

Two weeks after I was born, Mom and Dad packed the family up in the station wagon and moved us all to Houston for Dad's new job. I, of course, have no memory of this time. I have heard stories of bike rides to Blueberry Hill and the daily adventures of my brother. There are a few photos of Sissy and me, in which she is acting like the Mother Hen, fussing over me or dressing me up in some silly costume. All I know is, when we moved back to Houma two years later, my parents were no longer married.

We moved in with Grannie and Grandpa for a time until my Gramps bought us a nice new trailer to put on the lot next door. Mom, Rhett and I moved in, but Sissy stayed in the added on back room at Grannie's. I have so many memories of that room, all filled with 1960s nostalgia. She had the little white record case filled with 45s of the Beatles, Elvis, The Monkees and other hit makers. She also had a stack of albums. She had cat-eyeglasses for the longest time and big, poofy hair. She had a best friend named Twig, who sort of looked like and was nicknamed for the super skinny model, Twiggy.

One of the main things everyone remembers about my sister was that she was double-jointed in her knees. When she stood up a certain way they would bend backwards unnaturally. She also could Hula Hoop like a mad woman. 

When she got a boyfriend in high school, they used to sit in our tete-a-tete swing and I would go bother them in little sister ways. I remember being heart-broken when she left for college, not knowing it was just a short ways away in Hammond. I remember her calling to tell us that it was snowing there and I wished it was snowing on me too. She lasted only a semester or two as a Home Economics major -- back when there still was such a thing. Like a good 60s girl, she was a master at cooking.  

I was only 6 years old when she married her first husband, in a hurry-up post-Christmas event after he joined the Marines but before he was stationed in San Clemente, California. They married at our local Catholic church, which we attended very infrequently, and they had always told me there was no bathroom there so it really wasn't my fault that I peed on my mom's new boyfriend's lap. I was the flower girl, and Sissy and I were dressed in identical white crepe miniskirt dresses. She really did look lovely. I was cute. (I can't find the photos though.)

Rhett, Grannie and I went to visit her and Lou the next summer, even though I was terrified of getting hijacked. (Y'all don't believe me when I say I watched the news my whole life!) My brother, in his wisdom, told me not to worry because, if we got hijacked, it would be on the trip home. So I refused to fly home. I spent the whole summer with Sissy and Louie, going to the beach and eating Jack-in-the-Box burgers. They made me stay up to watch the Lunar landing. But they also took me to see The Blob and I was afraid to turn on any faucets for days. 

When it was time to come home, we drove -- from California to Louisiana in a Chevy Nova with no air conditioning. I didn't know she was pregnant at the time. 

When I was two days shy of my eighth birthday, my sister gave me the best birthday gift ever -- a real live baby doll in my nephew, Lee. I was in love at first sight and he and I grew up much like a brother and a sister. My nephew Beau came along a few years later, but he attached to my Grannie. Lee and I were almost inseparable for most of our lives.

Life got hard after that as her first marriage broke up. She went up and down in weight, causing a myriad of issues for her. Then she went up and down in love, through husbands and stepchildren that came and went through our lives like butterflies.

She ran an apartment complex for a while and hired me to be the pool sitter to make sure only residents were there. I got a great tan out of it.

Eventually she moved to Baton Rouge and started talking with a "southern" accent.

We were not really close like some sisters are. Our relationship with each other, and with our mother, was very complicated. There were some jealousy issues when I was young and single and she was not. There were issues over the care and feeding of our grandparents, her children, and then our mother. But the death of our brother rocked us both to our core. That night, after we both got the horrifying phone calls, we sat on the phone together for an hour, not talking, just sobbing. Together. There were flashbacks to that night after I had to call her at 2 a.m. to tell her that Mama was gone.

 She was a tough, don't-take-no-shit kind of woman, and that may have cost her dearly in some areas. But she also was smart as a whip, the only person who could challenge me in Scrabble without cheating. She loved to cook and was really good at it. Her task every Thanksgiving and Christmas was to bring the pies -- pecan for Grandpa, mincemeat for Mama and Grannie, cherry for Rhett and me. When we started to fight over them, she made two.

She also was a damn good bowler. I can't give any stats for her, but her name was on the walls at the Houma Bowl and one in Baton Rouge for high scores. She ran the Saturday morning and Monday night bowling leagues I used to belong to in my teen years. I never was as good as her. When she couldn't bowl any more, she played pool and darts and was good at both of those.

She also loved LSU sports with a passion. I was the sports writer, but her knowledge of LSU players and personnel rivaled that of the best beat writers I know. Many of our weekly phone calls were spent listening to her question the coaching decisions and lineup changes. I called it "Jo-splaining."

The only thing my sister wasn't really good at is cleaning. She was a bona fide slob. One time I went to her apartment and I asked if it had been ransacked. I was ready to call the police! Housework was not her thing. 

She also was early for everything -- sometimes too early. If our party started at 2, she was there by noon. And she had to leave early because she never liked to drive at night. 

But she was the first to insist that our family had to get together for some type of Christmas. She saw herself as our matriarch and did her best to try to keep us together. We did good for a while, getting together annually a few days after Christmas for a Pot Luck/White Elephant party with our clan. But then came Covid... then her health went. The last time we all got together was 2019. 

We spoke infrequently, usually only to commiserate over the latest quirk of our quirky mother. Both of us had difficult, complicated relationships with our mom, who was as head-strong as they come. She would fight with one of us then call the other to complain, then we would call each other. Both of us would begin those conversations with, "Your mother is nuts!"

After Mama died, we made a pact to call each other once a week. We would exchange mundane details of our lives as well as the exciting ones. The last year was hard. She couldn't walk, couldn't get out of the bed, fought with doctors and insurance. She had EMS on speed dial. Mostly I tried to cheer her up and give her a reason to get up and fight, to get moving again. 

She would call more often if there was a hurricane headed our way to remind me that I was going to drown in my attic if I didn't evacuate to her house in Baton Rouge. In 2021, we finally had to take her up on that offer after Hurricane Ida hit our town and knocked out power for a month. We spent a week in her guest bedroom, listening to her and Nick "fight" just like my grandparents used to. I'm so thankful for that week now.

We were shocked to find her pretty much confined to a hospital bed in her living room, surrounded by my grandparents' antique furniture and dishes. She had never fully recovered from a hip replacement and, largely thanks to Covid, services she normally would have received were not available to her. Both she and her husband, Nick, had been in and out of the ER and hospitals over the past two years. She spent all of November and December of 2021 in the hospital with no visitors allowed. 

Ultimately, an infection set into her incision in November and she couldn't fight it this time. She died on Dec. 11, 2022. She was the daughter of the late Lettie Lee French and the late Louis Delanuville Jr. She had two half-sisters -- me, Lori Lyons and, oddly enough, Lori Delanuville Graff of Texas; three sons -- Lee Saunier, Beau Saunier and Casey Catton; three grandchildren, Mallory, Aubrey and Ava; seven step grandchildren and three step great-grandchildren. (I do not know all of their names); nieces Lena Lyons Brunet (Clayton), Marti Lyons and Lora Leigh Luquet; step niece Courtney Luquet; a nephew Kevin Lyons (Samantha); step nephew Daniel Luquet (Cori); grand niece Madison Brunet; grand nephews Job and Isaac Lyons, Carson and Lincoln Brunet and Sage Hebert; step grand nieces Robi and Laken Luquet. She was preceded in death by her parents, her brother Rhett, and her grand parents Evelyn Himel Cross French and Martin Behrman French.

On her Facebook page, many friends expressed their sadness and sorrow over her death. They talked about how nice and caring she was, how much fun she was to be around. She definitely loved to give advice. I am rather lost without our weekly phone calls. Sometimes I go to push the button, forgetting she isn't there. I'll probably miss her the most the next time there is a hurricane in the Gulf headed our way or the next time LSU wins a National Championship in baseball or football. She won't be their angel in the outfield, though. She'll be the little devil on the coach's shoulder, telling him to bunt.

Fly high, Sissy. I miss you. 

Remnants

"Life sucks, then you die...

      Then someone comes and takes all your stuff."

It's an old joke, I know. Maybe it's not funny, but it is true.

My mom left this earth a little more than a month ago. She lived 84 years, the last 11 or so in a cute little house around the corner from me. For about 10 1/2 of those years, she bitched every day about needing to sell that house, needing to get out of that house, needing to get rid of all her stuff.

Then, one day in May, she did. Put a For Sale sign right in the front yard. She had an offer the next day. She sold it to somebody else a few days later. The buyers, acquaintances of ours, told her to take her time moving and cleaning it out.

It took a while.

From May to August, Mom spent hours sorting through the remnants of her life, trying to decide what to keep, what to toss, what to sell, what to give away. She tried to give lots of it away, too.

She managed to downsize enough that she was able to move into a nice little one bedroom apartment in May. But she wasn't there very long. It quickly became obvious to our family that mom wasn't going to be able to live alone. Her brain wasn't as sharp as it used to be.

Then she got sick.

So in August, she came to live with me, in a pretty small bedroom. I told her to bring whatever she wanted; the rest we put in storage.

After she was gone, I left it all alone until our family get-together, when I basically told everyone to take what they wanted. Then, I finally worked up the courage to start going through the leftovers, the remaining remnants of my mother's life.

You think you know someone until you have to empty their junk drawers.

Scotch tape. Rolls and rolls of it. Some of them empty.

Pens.

Scissors. I now have a German beer stein (hers) full of scissors. (I had, maybe, three pairs of scissors before and never could find them when I needed them.)

Her gall stone.

A letter I wrote to her for Mother's Day, thanking her for everything she had ever done for me.

The eulogy I wrote for my brother's funeral, along with his accident report.

My wedding and engagement announcements.

Her divorce papers. All three of them.

A check for $25 my grandmother wrote to her in 1979. Uncashed.

Her elementary school autograph book, filled with those cute little poems we all used to know. It's all written in pencil, though, so it's hard to read a lot of it.

A wonderful scrapbook of photos and clippings about former LSU football player Jim Shoaf. She and he were "friends" back in the day. I'd love to get this book to his family if anyone knows how to get in touch with them.

A few of my sister's report cards.

Lots of costume jewelry.

Lots of black clothing.

And, I think, every check register she ever kept.

I sorted through it all, keeping some, tossing  --- a lot. I could hear her in my head saying, "Don't throw that away! I might need it!"  I now have a "Mama box," filled with her keepsakes. It's next to the two boxes that contain my own. And Lora's. And Marty's.

I guess someday, someone will have to come go through my stuff, which will now include so my of my mom's and others.

I'm guessing they will be very confused.

They probably will wonder why I have six portraits of me. No, I'm not that vain. My mother was a painter and had me pose for her often. And her art classes. She also studied with the artist Henry Hensche and paid handsomely for him to do a "study" of me. But she was totally pissed that the one that I hung over my piano wasn't the one by her or him.

They probably will wonder why I have all of my grandmother's genealogy notes. Well, that's because, when she died, mom gave it all to me to go through..... Yeah. I still have lots of it.

They might wonder why I have my great grandmother's pie safe, my other great-grandmother's boudoir chair and settee, my grandmother's wicker screen and my mother-in-law's dresser. They won't know where the four-poster bed came from.....

They probably will find a few surprises somewhere. But no gall stones.

However, they now know why I have so many pairs of scissors.

No tomorrow

"I'll see you Monday," I said. "I'll bring my book and sit with you all day. I'll need the rest."

It was a promise I made and fully intended to keep to my Mama on Saturday as I left her surrounded by my nieces, the great-grandkids and my sister-in-law. I brought coffee. They brought Popeye's.

It was the day before the big Christmas parade that literally ends at my house. Every year we host a big Open House for family, friends and some parade participants. I had a million things to do. The Coach and I were headed to the grocery store for vittles for the party. But I was already exhausted from a week of house-prep and Mama.

She had been in the hospital since last Friday, complaining of not feeling well. She had been lethargic. Nauseated. Weary.

Turns out, she really did need that oxygen they sent her home with a few years ago but she sent back. That day her oxygen levels were so low the triage nurse thought the reading was wrong. No, they really were in the 40s.

She was released on the following Thursday and moved to the nursing home near our home for a temporary respite. "Skilled nursing," they call it, for the patients too well to stay in a hospital but not really ready to return to their little room in their daughter's house. She had up to 20 days paid for by her insurance to get stronger, get some more physical therapy and get used to the idea that she really did need that oxygen.

She had spent a week at another facility in August. That one was more of a hospital though. This was a nursing home, the same one where my mother-in-law spent her last week. Where many others do too.

"Do these people stay here all the time?" she asked me on Friday.

"Some do," I told her. "But you're only here temporarily until you get stronger so you can come home."

I had been there every day, getting her settled. Getting her TV set up. Bringing her clothes, makeup, toothpaste and a daily thermos full of my husband's coffee -- which she loved.

She was doing OK, I thought, but not great. She didn't look so good. She still didn't feel so good. My sister went to visit her after the parade.

"She didn't look good," she said. "She said she didn't feel good."

A little after 2 a.m., the phone rang. I've come to know that a middle-of-the-night phone call is never a good thing. That's when your mom calls to tell you your big brother has died in a car wreck on a lonely stretch of road. That's when that same nursing home called to tell my husband that his mother was on the way to the hospital she would not leave.

To me they simply said, "There's been a change in status. Can you come down to the facility?" Then she gave me a code to get in. I had to call back to get it repeated.

I was in my closet getting dressed when I realized it. Mama was gone. They didn't say she was being taken to the hospital. "Change in status." That can only mean one thing.

An eternity later (really only 15 minutes) we drove up and saw the ambulance idling and the Sheriff's Deputy's car. I knew.

Inside, a lovely lady named Claudette stammered as she tried to say the words I already knew were coming. The nurse, making her rounds, found my mom in her bed. She was gone.

I wanted to see her, but I was asked to wait for the coroner to come. About 30 minutes later they decided he wasn't coming and I could go in.

Her body was there, but the fierce, fiery, sassy, force of nature that was my Mama was gone. Stilled. Poof. Just like that.

That's the hard part. I was supposed to see her tomorrow. But tomorrow came and she was gone. There will be no more phone calls asking me when I'm coming to fix her TV or her phone or bring her coffee or her glasses. There will be no more arguing over something stupid. We did that a lot.

While she was in the hospital, I rearranged her room at my house. She had only been there since August and we were still trying to get her settled. A fabulous painter, she brought many of her artworks with her to my house, but in her depressed state she never let me hang them. I put as many of them up as I could while she was out so they would be there when she came home.

She never thought of this as her home, though. It was my home to her. It was my kitchen. My refrigerator. My cabinets. I told her once, "I bought you the cookies you like." She replied, "I'm not going to go through your cabinets looking for something to eat, Lori." No matter how many times I tried to tell her, "This is your home now," it never was.

I had hope for our future, even though I knew it would be somewhat short. I had no idea it would be this short.

When my mama lost her mama in 1988, she told me, "That's a champion you lose forever." She was right.

I really did plan to go to the home on Monday and sit with her and rest my sore feet and legs. I would have. But when tomorrow came, she was gone. Instead, I packed up her few belongings and brought them home. Then I went to the funeral home to make arrangements and fill out her death certificate.

Hey. Not everyone gets to put "Tarot Card reader" in the occupation box.

I got to see her one more time. Still still. And it broke my heart in pieces to know that was the last time we  would be in the same room. Forever.

I won't get to see her tomorrow.

Hurricane Jane

When I first met my mother-in-law Jane, I was told that one of her nicknames was "Hurricane Jane."

It wasn't difficult to understand why.

Jane was a whirlwind of energy back in the day, a head-strong, vocal, opinionated woman who had no compunctions about sharing them. She told you like it was -- or like she saw it. Sometimes, that rubbed folks the wrong way.

But hurricanes eventually lose their strength. Shortly after Jane moved in with my husband, my daughter and me for the last time, he was aiding his mother to the dinner table one evening.

"Come on Jane," Marty said, urging her along. "Hurricane Jane, I think you've been downgraded to a Tropical Depression."

But even to the end she was the same old Jane. Even as she battled time and whatever ailment that was attacking her frail little body in her final hours, she put up the good fight, refusing to let go.  Even to the end she proved to be contrary. And even as her mind began to wander, her thoughts began to ramble, and her eyes became unseeing to what was happening around her, her voice never gave up.

In other words, she never stopped telling it like it is -- or how she saw it.

Her bed was uncomfortable: "What? You can afford a pool but not a comfortable cot?

She was ever the Baseball Mom: "This team didn't even show up today."

And a critic: "These umpires are terrible."

And, maybe, a little scared: "If I don't pray, I'm going to hell."

She had spent only one week in the nearby nursing home The Coach and I had moved her to after her needs exceeded our capabilities. She didn't want to go, but after only a day or so of digging in her heels, even she knew that she needed more care than we could give her. On my last day as her full time caretaker, I was practically carrying her to the bathroom. The next day, she could no longer walk.

So the paperwork was quickly done and I began packing for her move. But I never even got to finish moving her in. Half her closet was empty. We never got to hang pictures on her wall.

After just seven days, she became ill. The staff called us in the middle of the night to tell us they were taking her to the hospital. The next night they called to ask Marty if she had a DNR in place, and the doctor wanted to meet with him in the morning.

So on Saturday morning, The Coach left the house in full baseball uniform, but instead of heading to the ballpark, he went to the hospital. He met with the doctor on duty,who explained that Jane's body was shutting down, her end was near, that it was time to begin our goodbyes.

In tears, Marty started calling and messaging the rest of us. Soon enough, her grandchildren, her former daughter-in-law and her present one gathered around Jane's bed and tried to make sense of what she was saying.

"11:30," she kept saying. When my husband's first wife asked what that meant, she replied, "Happy Hour."

That surprised none of us.

We were surprised an hour or so later when her regular doctor came in, took a look around and wondered what the heck we were all doing there.

"It's not time for this," he said. "She has an infection. We're giving her antibiotics. She's OK."

So I took my Teen home to go back to bed. And the Coach left to go to the baseball field. His departure may have been her last moment of clarity.

"Bye, Mom. I'm going to the ballpark for a while," he said, leaning over to kiss her forehead.

"Me too," she replied.

My stepdaughter stayed a while and listened to her grandmother ramble on about the election of 1915, which, Jane said, was won by the Priest's son. So was the World Series. (Jane was born in 1930.) She also was presented with a nurse's challenge to feed her nearly comatose grandmother baked chicken and corn for lunch.

After securing the pre-season victory, The Coach returned to the hospital. Now his mother seemed to be in pain. A nurse offered a shot of morphine -- to her, not to him.

And a few minutes later, she simply slipped away, doing it her way to the very end.

Stunned, mystified, Marty sent the family a text. "It's Pappy's turn now. Jane has passed."

On February 25th, we gathered to say our last goodbye to my mother-in-law, Jane. It was left to me to select a sampling of our favorite photos, so I picked the ones I thought best represented the woman we all knew. Most of them involved some kind of costume -- "Old Ariel" is legendary. But there also was one of her dancing with her grandson at his wedding, holding her great-granddaughter, in front of what was once her home after the real hurricane destroyed it.

Jane and Pappy survey what was left after Hurricane Katrina

Jane meets her great-granddaughter

Jane, "Mary Poppins"

Luau Jane

Irish Jane

Mardi Gras Jane

 And the one we selected for her obituary. It was left to me to write that too.

Jane Mae Rafferty Luquet, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and Baseball Mom, died on Saturday, February 15, 2014, at St. Charles Parish Hospital in Luling. She was 83. Born on November 24, 1930, in New Orleans, Jane was the youngest child of George "Red" Rafferty and Martina Daly, and joined a host of Irish Channel cousins. In 1951, she married Valsin "Pappy" Luquet and soon became the mother of three boys, all of whom would grow up to be baseball players and coaches. Married to Pappy for 57 years, his work moved them from New Orleans to Anaheim, CA, to Concord, CA, to Chicago, ILL, to Charlotte, NC. Eventually, they would retire and settle in Waveland, Mississippi, where they lived happily until Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home. They lived in Norco and Kenner before Pappy died in 2008, then Jane moved to The Windsor Senior Living Center in Mandeville. For the past year Jane lived in Norco. She is survived by sons Valsin Luquet Jr. (Deidre Digel) of Montgomery, Texas; Dennis Luquet (Marianne Carroll) of Walnut Creek, California; and Marty Luquet (Lori Lyons) of Norco; grandchildren Daniel Luquet (Cori Southard), Courtney Luquet, Lora Leigh Luquet, Gared Luquet and Caitlin Luquet; great-granddaughter Robi Drew Luquet; brother Steve Rafferty of Kenner; sister Alice Rafferty Brechtel of Metairie; and a host of nieces, nephews and cousins. She is preceded in death by her husband Valsin Paul Luquet Sr., her parents George and Martina (Daly) Rafferty, and her great-grandchild Parker Luquet. A fiery, fun-loving Irish woman, Jane loved parties, baseball, card games, Happy Hour and her family's annual St. Patrick's Day celebration. A Funeral Mass will be held at noon on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Norco. Visitation will be held at the church from 10 a.m. to funeral time. Arrangements by H.C. Alexander Funeral Home in Norco.

As Louisiana'ans, we are accustomed to hurricanes. We know how to prepare for them, we know how to anticipate them, we know how to weather them. 

We hunker down.

That's what my family and I have been doing for the last 16 months - hunkering down as we weathered the storm that was Hurricane Jane. Our forays out of our compound were brief and near -- occasional sandwiches at the local Pub for the most part. Longer trips required getting a sitter -- hard to come by for the elderly. Only one relative ever offered to come stay with her to give us a break.

A few times she went to visit her sister and niece for a weekend to give us respite. Marty's brother, Dennis, came during the summer to let take a quick trip to the beach. I cannot remember the last movie Marty and I went to together ("Silver Linings Playbook" maybe?). I absolutely cannot remember the last movie the three of us went to. 

But now the storm has passed, and Marty, Lora and I are clearing the debris and making necessary repairs and trying to move on. It's an adjustment, of course.

Hurricane Jane certainly left her mark.

Class of 80

It has been nearly 34 years since I graduated with the Terrebonne High School Class of 1980 in the then-small town of Houma, Louisiana.

It's a quiet little town where everybody knows lots of people and somebody knows everybody. That usually made it hard to get into too much trouble. Back in our day, we were happy to have a Burger King,a McDonald's and Shakey's Pizza Parlor.  Now it has an Outback, an Applebee's, a Hooter's and a bunch of sushi places. It also has more than a few places to get really good, hot boiled crabs.

Let me say right off that we were nothing like the Swamp People guys you see on TV, although all of us can probably say we did know people like them and maybe some of us have turned into people like them over the years. Yes, I did grow up with alligators in the bayou in my back yard, but I never tried to catch them or play with them or make them into pets. I didn't kill them, either. As long as they didn't mess with me, I didn't mess with them.

We did have a boat, but my parents never let me just take it for a spin. My brother did, often, and frequently came back paddling it after breaking a shear pin on the trip. I did know one or two boys who liked to hunt alligators and other things. And some of us do have funny accents. But the only time we wore camouflage was the week we played South Terrebonne in football and we did it to make fun of them. (Sorry, y'all.)

Although we were aware of current events, we were not a political bunch. Back then there was no Left or Right. Women's Rights were still on the table. So were Abortion Rights. Some things were still segregated by habit, if not by law. There was no such thing as Gay Rights. Being Gay was not. It was a joke, a rumor to be spread, an accusation to be hurled.

 Like I said, it was a small town. And it was a different time.  There was no Fox News,  just channels 4, 6, 8 and 12 --  until cable was invented and some of us got HBO.

We grew up on shows like the Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island and Dark Shadows. We watched cartoons on Saturday mornings and (fake) wrestling on Sundays. We learned our multiplication, our civics and our grammar from School House Rock.

We were a wacky bunch of middle class kids, who grew up with the Vietnam War on our televisions and protests in the streets, back when the Russians were our mortal enemies -- until the Hostage Crisis in Iran. We formed our own chapter of the Southhampton Yacht Club and had regular meetings on the front lawn at school. We wore Hawaiian shirts and brought picnic lunches and lawn chairs. The band combo performed. A guy made a guest appearance dressed as the Ayatollah.

 Back then we could legally drink at the age of 18, and we did, torturing our systems with beer and bourbon and Boone's Farm Tickled Pink in the middle of the cane fields. We didn't have cell phones or text messaging back then, so us girls sat around our houses quite a lot, waiting for the telephone to ring. And when we did leave, pretty much the only place to go was the Mall.

We didn't have GPS either, but no one ever got lost in our hometown. A few did once they left, however.

And we've lost quite a few since 1980. I don't know the exact number. I don't know if we are above or below the average. To us, of course, it's too many. Car accidents. Boating accidents. Cancer. Murder. One died in a horrific disco fire that was deliberately set. One was murdered in his home  -- a crime still unsolved, I believe.

Thanks to my former job at the newspaper, where I read wire copy A LOT, I was able to keep up with some of these happenings. I don't know how the rest did.  Our class officers keep track so that we can have a little memorial to them at our reunions. I guess the rest was just through word of mouth.

But now we have Facebook, where most of us gather to share pictures of our children, our grandchildren, our views on guns and gays, Swamp People, Duck Dynasty and the current president. But we are able to keep up with each other now that time and fate or pure dumb luck has spread us around the world. It also makes our reunions a lot more fun. At our last one, our 30th, I barely had to introduce my husband to anyone. He walked in and was greeted by many as, "Coach!" Then he spent most of the night hanging out in a hallway with a couple of former football players while I tried to recognize the faces inside.

But we also use it keep up with our losses.

I got a message from a longtime classmate the other day, letting me know that we had lost one of our own, a girl I met in the first days of elementary school, who journeyed with me right up until the May day when we all sat -- sweating -- on the football field in our crimson and gold gowns, with bright shiny futures ahead of us. She was a mom, a grandmother, a nurse, a Houma girl who loved to fish.

Throughout the recent Christmas holidays, she had battled pneumonia, then the flu. Sometime Saturday night she simply slipped away. Her name was Julie. She was 51.

So am I.

This one hurts -- not that the others did not. But this one is really the first one I was witness too, in a manner of speaking.  It is anguishing to see her write "I can only think that 2014 is going to be awesome!!" on her timeline, only to see her friends writing "Rest in peace" a few days later. Just days later...

And there are more losses to come. There are others among us waging wars against time, harmful invaders, and their own bodies. Some fight their battles privately while others choose to share their wins and losses so we can cheer them on.

We're not ready for any of them to leave. We are not ready to see the faces of the children we chased on the playground and passed our homework to and danced next to at prom in the obituaries. We are not ready to be among them when there are careers to finish and children to raise and grandchildren to enjoy and destinations to reach and Bucket Lists to finish.

 And whether we see them or not, speak with them or not, we all feel better just knowing that our friends  are somewhere -- anywhere -- in the world, and can always come back home.

We are too young. At least, in our minds we are.