CityView Magazine

4 | Februar y 2020 E D I T O R ' S C O R N E R H ere in the month of love, it is nice to remind ourselves that love really does endure. Especially, I would think, considering recent events. Love endures in gestures, memories, ripples across time. Love endures in music. ings weren't always posted on the internet, so a memory from years ago sent me looking for one of my columns in one of the long-ago albums my mother-in-law once kept. In the days before the internet, she used to clip each of my columns, write the date on each rectangle of newsprint in her elegant penmanship, then place them between the plastic sheets of photo albums. Once an album was filled, she would move to another. When she became very ill, she eventually grew too weary for albums. Still, she clipped the columns and placed them in decorative boxes until the end. I found the column I was looking for inside just the second place I checked, and since there are more of those albums than I've ever tried to count, I figure that was a ripple. e column was about a young mother of four I once knew. She had been a preschool teacher and a school librarian. She was the kind of person who laughed at herself and with others, but never at anyone. She was caring, kind and pretty. One of the things I wrote about her was a story she told during the children's portion of the worship service one Sunday. She said she would always buy conversation hearts when Valentine's Day came around each year. No matter how many bags she bought, her husband, a Fayetteville pediatrician, would snitch all the best flavors. e adults got a kick out of that story as much as the children did. Even aer she was diagnosed with cancer, she would bake her famous cheese biscuits for the annual senior ladies' luncheon at Haymount United Methodist Church. I'm betting that lots of people remember that. I'm betting they also remember her smile, her stories, her sense of humor. Kim Susanne Long was 45 when she died in 2004. An angelic rendition of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," was sung at her funeral. It was a departure from ordinary funeral selections, and it was perfect. We can be sad. Love can pass from our lives. Still, as the song says, what a wonderful world it is. Love endures. In this issue of CityView, Claire Long Mullen writes a column on family life that I hope will be the first of many for us and our readers. She has entertained friends and family for years with her social media posts and her hilarious perspective on life with young children. She has a sense of humor all her own. But, still, I can't help but be reminded of another woman with a great sense of humor — Claire's mother, Susanne Long.

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