I don't know that I should be sharing this. But I live my life in public, and so I will.
[img_assist|nid=3047|title=Betsy Gail Boyes 5/22/1958 to 7/29/2009|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=240|height=320]At 4:30 pm on July 29th, my life changed completely. The 911 operator called and told me my wife was found slumped over the steering wheel of our car at the supermarket, and when I got to the hospital, my wife, Betsy, who was 51 and in good health, was dead.
She and I had been married for over 26 years. She was simply put, the most wonderful person I ever met. She was a bubble of champagne, as one of our friends put it when I called to tell her the horrible news.
She fed all the doves and half the birds in Aurora Illinois, and most of the rabbit population, too. She loved children, took in strays, and worked very hard to rescue everyone and everything that came her way that needed it. She made magic happen. She was my heart and my soul, and now she’s suddenly gone. When she was very savagely bitten by a dog we were trying to rehabilitate earlier this year, she sat on the floor of the vet’s office, holding the dog and telling him she loved him as the vet put him down.
She made a difference in people’s lives. The year she worked as a special education teacher at a high school in Kent Washington, 10 students graduated high school who would not have, if she hadn’t intervened in their lives. She was a natural born teacher, and taught in every grade level down to preschool. She spent her last year teaching at the Goddard School in North Aurora, Illinois, where she taught the 2-1/2 to 3 year olds…and who will miss her terribly tomorrow when Ms. Betsy isn’t there.
She made a difference in my life. I am a better and greater person for having her as my wife. I hope that the rest of my life will be lived the way she would encourage me to.
We made a wonderful daughter together. Andrea, who will be 21 in September, is just as punch-drunk as I am.
What I wish for is that everyone can meet someone as marvelous as Betsy Gail.
Those of us who work with dogs and cats often tell the story of the Rainbow Bridge. That’s the place our pets go to wait for us so that when we join them, we can all walk across the bridge and through the gate of Heaven.
Betsy is there, now, with The Fabulous Jilliedog, with Laddybuck, with Susan the Princess, with Starr, and with Rosie, and with her true heartdog, Ladybug. And all the cats, Leo, Katie, Cody, Kitten are there with her too.
And one day, the rest of us will join her.
Until then, I will miss her desperately.
And do your humble editor a favor. Go home, find someone you love, and hug them, and tell them so. The last words she said to me on the phone were, “I love you.”
I just want to say that I love her too.
