Betty was family on my mother's side.  She was always very sweet to me and most all, always, from the time I was a child, super supportive of my interests in music.  She loved Jazz and we would often talk about some of our favorite musicians.  Betty also would routinely give me very ecclectic musical instruments as gifts, some of which i still have in my possession today.   She was always a very positive influence in my musical endevours, and now, I have been a professional musician for almost 30 years.  I miss her and think of her fondly

Beth - you mention one of Betty's books. I knew she was writing an autobiography and she asked me to read over part of it and make suggestions, which I did. Do you have a copy of it - did she ever finish it? I thought Susan Jonas had a copy. But I don't know how to reach either of you. Could you, Beth, adn Susan, if you read this, please contact me at jimac4@verizon.net. I would so love to read the whole thing, or as far as she got. Many thanks, Jill

I love coming across Betty's distinctive script when reading one of her books.  And finding notes to herself tucked as bookmarks, or reminders.  She was such a scholar of life, language, and the human spirit.  Here is a passage I found underlined in Savage Beauty, Nancy Milford's biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (from her poem 'Renascence'):

I miss you Betty, and I am so grateful to you for so many things.

I think of you every day. I miss you and I thank you.

It is a Christmas card she used in the first years she was at her home on Gonzales. 

What a story, thank you Alicia. Glad Bodhi is back in her rightful place with you! Jill

Bodhi was Betty's cat during the last ten years of her life.  If you know Betty, you know almost every year of her adult life she had one or two cats that she loved and cared for very much.  Betty intuited when she received Bodhi in 2005  that she might not live as long as he would.  She asked me if I would take her cat.  She asked me even before she started her search with an adoption agency.  As I had helped her and knew the cats she had until they passed over (Seaberry and Witty) I said yes.  I didn't want her to worry about what would happen. 

It was in February 2015 when Betty passed over and mysteriously Bodhi  did not go to us as was directed by her verbal instructions (she'd talk about it) and as it was explicitly directed in her will. Instead Bodhi began a 27 month long odyssey that began when he was absconded from Betty's house by Betty's physical therapist less than four hours after she died.

We don't know the details other then that he stayed with her until the summer when she returned him to the adoption agency in New Mexico. Feline and Friends is the local cat loving sanctuary that had originally brokered his adoption in 2005 to Betty when he was about three months old.  I met Bodhi the first day he came to her home on Gonzales Road.  I helped Betty to set up her bedroom for him. That was the first room he knew there. He create a nest under her bed by climbing inside the hollow frame of the box spring. Day by day he grew more bold He explored her room and closet and bathroom eventually venturing out to one day become the kitty-lion and lord of her three floor home. 

When Bodhi was returned to them in the summer of 2015, Feline and Friends immediately found him a home with a gentleman who already had one cat. 

As it turns out Bodhi loves people, but doesn't love or understand other cats as he had lived his whole ten years knowing and loving people, not other animals. By the end of 2016 the gentleman who adopted him returned Bodhi to Feline and Friends.They put him up for adoption again. He remained with them for four months. For some mysterious reason he was somehow not adopted.  He was not seen, he remained unnoticed at the Petco shop (he's very beautiful) until a friend of Betty's texted me.  "Your cat is at Petco's. Please go and pick him up. 

This was April 2017.  I was shocked because I didn't know anything about his life for many many months, 24 months in fact. Later that day Charles and I drove to Petco and when we entered, getting closer to where they kept the pets up for adoption, Bodhi heard us and came to the edge of the cage asking to be let out. 

And just like that, Bodhi was snuggled in my arms. He found us and we found him.  This image is a picture I sent to Susan in the first few months after he came to our home.  He's still a kitty-king and he's been here with Charles and I ever since.  No more adoptions, no more abscond-tions.

I know that somehow a lot of good people and prayers and maybe even Betty somehow had a hand in him finding us and coming home.

Betty's close family, her god children and some close friends all cared enough to hold space to want him to find his way to the place she wanted Bodhi to live when she died. And it came to be. Things moved into place. I am so grateful we are together again. It's hard to understand why it wasn't so simple for him to be here back in 2015.  But we are together now.  And when I look at him I also see Betty.  And for however longer we have a four-legged piece of her heart purring and happy.