CityView Magazine

4 | March 2020 E D I T O R ' S C O R N E R T hey were four friends with busy lives, bustling households, lots to do. Yet, every year for as long as anyone could remember, they made a plan, set the date and celebrated each other's birthdays over lunch. Years and then decades passed, children were born and raised, sadness was endured, joys were shared, and the four friends never missed a birthday. "I don't think they saw each other a lot the rest of the year," my friend Frank Moorman was saying. "But I remember how cheerful and happy my mom would be aer those luncheons." Frank's mother was Mary "Covey" Yarborough Moorman. e others in that particular quartet were Zula McFadyen Barton, Mary Miller Hamilton Griffin and Augusta Worth Knight. "Never any pretense among them," Frank Moorman said. "Never any posturing. ey weren't like that anyway." Covey Moorman was the first to pass. She died in 2000 at age 73. Augusta Knight was next, and then Zula Barton. Friends and family said good-bye to the last of the four girlfriends recently when Mary Miller Griffin died Feb. 20 at age 92. "ey'll be celebrating their next get-together in heaven," Linda Tillman, Zula Barton's daughter, remarked. I love that story. It makes me think of those four longtime girlfriends laughing and talking and enjoying each other's company. It reminds me once again of the importance of girlfriends, of the good, supportive, always- there women in our lives. I imagine most of us feel that we are quite a bit busier than those four girlfriends were back then, with all our contemporary and technological hustle and bustle, and oen it seems so difficult to carve out even a little time to spend on friendships. But spring is coming, along with the promise of gentle weather and the possibility of getaways or at least an al fresco lunch or two on the horizon. I have a couple of girls' trips on my own calendar. Some college friends will be waiting, and we get together only once every two years. Another girls' trip with a different group of friends is planned for early May. Kim Truth be told, it's all a lot of planning, including one long round-trip flight. But every time I've gone, I've been glad I did. And in honor of all those girlfriends who have gone before us, well, we just need to make the time. Frank Moorman is a man, but he nevertheless has a wife, two daughters and two sisters and was the son of a woman who could speak to the importance of the friendships between women. He says funerals are important and that it means a lot to family members to look out over the congregation or the gravesite and realize that people made the effort to come. "It's hard to get to funerals," he said. "ey're oen during your workday." Important, yes, but even more than getting to the funeral is getting to the lunches, to the getaway weekends, even just to the heart-to-heart conversations. "Don't let all your memories be of the funeral," Frank was saying. I think I'll take a look at those flight schedules now.

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