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Shirley
By Judy Keifer, Litchfield
Recently I lost a good friend when Shirley Morton of Bantam died at age 67. I first met Shirley when I was still working in a dental office where she was a patient. One day I was cleaning her teeth and gabbing away about summer and tag sales. She interrupted me and said, "Do you know what I like? Those columns that Judy Keifer writes for the newspaper!" I gave her a funny look and said that I was the person who wrote those columns.
"No, you are not! You don't look like the picture!" I finally convinced her that I did write the columns, and from that day we became friends. I would see her, and her longtime companion, Don Anderson, at the Saturday morning tag sales, where she would be looking for the salt and pepper sets and red china cardinals that she collected.
When I heard at the dental office that she could no longer climb our steps because her diabetes had worsened, and she was confined to her home except for three times weekly dialysis treatments, I began to visit her in Bantam. There she and I and Don shared many a good conversation. Although Shirley's health was failing more, she always seemed glad to see me and her other company. She always had a new joke and I used to tease her that her memory was better than mine, and I couldn't remember the tag line to the jokes long enough to tell them to my husband when I got home.
Her stories about her family and the "olden days" in Bantam were so good that I finally brought my tape recorder and gathered some of them into a little booklet for her. She appreciated that, but she gleefully pointed out a few errors I made in names and dates.
I was shocked when Don called to tell me she had decided to stop going to dialysis, but when I went to see her, she assured me her mind was made up, and she was tired of being ill, and on oxygen, and being a burden to others. I told her she was an inspiration, not a burden, but she was determined, and she passed peacefully, surrounded by her family.
It was a beautiful day when she was laid to rest in the family plot in the Bantam Cemetery, and many gathered to wish her Godspeed in Eternity. She was a funny, brave, smart woman.
We will all miss you, Shirley.
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