Auntie Daphne, Uncle John, Brenda, and Bill at the old Peppermint Place theme park.

Grandma Watkins, Bill & Brenda in England.


Continued from prior post...

' ....In her living almost precisely 8 yrs beyond him - and missing him dearly each day - she told me many times he was still around.
And I believed her - for she had once seen dimly beyond the veil herself - recounting it precisley and vividly each time I eagerly asked her to re-tell the story.

Among her rituals, she doted on his favorite sports car - about which - after due passage of the proper interval - Bill would proudly again proclaim 'you know it has a Mercedes engine'... 
that Red Chrysler Crossfire - and like a 20-something Brenda would take it for spins on her country roads - so that he could go too, place herself in that same space, keeping him close 
Always

And now Brenda is again united with Bill
Resuming their journey, a new and wonderful phase, absent the quiet everpresent sorrow
In a better place than this world can ever be
Please let this soften the loss, lessen the heartbreak that we must for our remaining time endure
For the joy that she now knows can await us too."

"In many ways Bill was like a father to me.
That makes Brenda in many ways like a mother.
And my perception of them both is as elements of one whole  - that at the deepest level an eternal tie forever binds them.
Brenda never deviated from appraising their connection and their temporal separation in this sense.
It was foundational and fact.

Meeting first in March 1990, Bill and I went on to spend countless hours together as colleagues at NASA 
And much more as friends
We travelled cross country for work - whether braving a Minnesta/South Dakota -30F winter - 
or relishing a British Columbia spring or a New Mexico mountain fall 
And sat - for what must in sum amount to weeks over years - at a weathered picnic bench at JSC  
Discussing diverse topics from politics to markets to metaphysics to physics 
And family - his love for his wife and children and grandchildren - and the enumerable stories dating back to their early days in England and Wales as told by one so blessed with a long life lived and remembered
Per these explorations, I once gave him a copy of Steven Weinberg's popular treatise on the Big Bang - "The First Three Minutes"  
He read it, misplaced it, so I got him a second one, he read it again.
The genesis of this existence fascinated him
And in his passing he's seen all of its secrets and more

I first knew Brenda only through Bill and his stories.
Later, in 1995, we finally met when they together moved me and my three cats to New Mexico for what was to become an 8 year work assignment. 
They helped launch me at a key juncture in my life, a loving gesture bestowed kindly and gracefully upon my spirit, my soul.
From there forth Brenda and I talked when I called them at home - catching each other up before handing me over to "Old Bill"  
When Bill passed in 2015, Brenda I spoke much more - and Bill was usually our topic - our common connection.
In her living almost precisely 8 yrs beyond him - and missing him dearly each day - she told me many times he wa

OBITUARY

Brenda May Davidson

May 5, 1936 – February 20, 2023

Forest Park East Funeral Home & Cemetery

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