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Bone-chilling winds, throngs of rabid Green Bay Packer fans, and I rushed into Dallas on a frigid Friday night in January.

The freezing cold, a stark contrast to the seventy degrees and sunshine I left in San Diego.

The football fanatics in town for a Wild Card playoff game against the Cowboys.

Me? I traveled to my hometown to say good-bye to my buddy pal, my girlhood best friend’s husband of sixty-four years.

Janice and I touch base regularly sharing stories of travel, family, recipes, and the like. Just before Thanksgiving, she related how Frank, her devoted husband, had just planted pansies – yellow, purple, and white—in the flower beds edging the flagstone patio of their luxurious home. For her, he changed the expansive gardens each season. Vibrant fuchsias and deep red azaleas in the spring, heat-loving marigolds and zinnias in the summer, mums in the fall, and pansies each winter season.

Frank also showered my friend with diamonds and turquoise, expensive watches, luxury travel, exquisite surroundings, and unending acts of service.

She rarely filled her tank with gasoline.

These two have been a constant in my life since their first meeting her freshman year at North Texas University in Denton. I had opted to go west to Texas Technological University in Lubbock. Our first Thanksgiving home, she blushed as she talked about this cute guy she’d met.

Janice and Frank married and stayed in Dallas, living together in half a dozen homes, all within a ten-mile range of the homes they grew up in; I have lived in thirty-eight different homes in seventeen different cities, several multiple times. Dallas to name one.

Over the years, I grew to love Frank as much as I loved Janice, my almost sister. She and I were delighted when our husbands bonded.

When my husband died, I cried on Frank’s shoulder. Often.

When I brought my new guy to visit, Frank took my East Coast transplant to buy a pair of cowboy boots. The four of us celebrated over Queso and Margaritas. The next day we took off for Perini Ranch in Buffalo Gap, an unrivaled joyous road trip.

That’s how it is in Texas.

I visited Dallas two or three times a year for decades. Janice made sure I was at the North Dallas High School Reunions. Each visit, Frank was there to meet me; I never lifted a suitcase. And I always came home with a vow to “be more like Frank.”

As wealthy as he was, he was fiscally responsible and so well informed. “Take this new kind of lightbulb home and get it for every fixture in your house,” he offered when LED options surfaced. “It can save as much as five or six bucks on your monthly electric bill.”

Other worthwhile, but often ignored advice—"Ask your carrier to consolidate…” or “Be sure you put a tank of high octane…” or “Look, this is how you change your filter…”

I could depend on Frank for information. For advice. For comfort.

Above all, however, Frank was a gentleman.

A stern father. A strong partner. But a gentleman who delighted in sending stupid jokes regularly to his friends. He made me laugh. Rarely at his dumb jokes. Most often, his wry sense of humor.

When we were a foursome, Frank and I were always in sync. Adventurous Alpha Dogs leading the pack. Marfa. Wine Country. Big Bend National Park. San Francisco.

Buffalo Gap, home of Perini Ranch and the best peppered beef tenderloins known to man, over and over.

I loved Frank like a brother.

 

When I hadn’t heard from Janice just before Christmas, I sat with my first cup of coffee and called.

I knew instantly something was wrong.

“I didn’t want to ruin your holiday,” she said sorrowfully.

By this time, she and he and their family, kids I have known since birth, had dealt with the devastation of his December twelfth diagnosis.

Aggressive cancer throughout the body and brain.

“We’re considering treatment plans. I’ll be sure to let you know,” she assured.

We texted back and forth over the next days as they dealt with unending medical issues.

“I need an update,” I texted just before Frank’s eighty-sixth birthday on January sixth.

We always talked on one another’s birthdays yet I felt guilty for intruding in Janice’s life that had been upended like the gale force winds that ravaged Dallas as 2024 began.

“He’s going into a five-to-seven-day hospice care center, the T. Boone Pickens Hospice and Palliative Care Center in north Dallas,” she told me.

As I began to cry, thoughts of my dad and his buddy, T. Boone Pickens struck me. Dad loved to tell their stories as upstarts in the oil business with Phillips Petroleum. Pickens became known as an oil billionaire, corporate raider, and one of Texas’ most colorful and innovative entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

“I’m so sorry, Janice,” I said as she wept.

And then, as mine had done, Janice’s children took over. Her older son became the patriarch of this new family, the new family that theirs would become without Frank. And Leanne, her daughter, like Jamie, my daughter had in our loss, became the conduit. The communicator. The scheduler. The planner and the fierce protector of her mother.

 

Leanne reached out to me.

“Two weeks at the most,” her grim text.

My reply: “If I come tomorrow, will I be in time to say goodbye to my buddy pal?”

“Of course. Mom wants you here, but she knew you had a new book coming out and didn’t wanna bother you…”

Any wonder she’s my longest lasting BFF?

“I’m arriving Friday night. Will wait to hear when I can visit on Saturday, Leanne.”

“Dad is drifting in and out of consciousness, but when we told him you were coming, he smiled and gave a big thumbs up.”

I felt my throat constrict.

 

Frank grew up in Highland Park, the ritzy section of Dallas.

I grew up in Greenway Park which borders Highland Park and is not quite so ritzy.

Janice grew up in a working-class neighborhood. We were school mates.