{"id":798,"date":"2025-12-31T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/?p=798"},"modified":"2025-12-29T19:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T19:29:10","slug":"ilona-cole-guest-author-story-193","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/31\/ilona-cole-guest-author-story-193\/","title":{"rendered":"Ilona Cole, Guest Author, Story 193"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"774\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karin-774x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-799\" srcset=\"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karin-774x1024.jpg 774w, https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karin-227x300.jpg 227w, https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karin-768x1016.jpg 768w, https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karin-1161x1536.jpg 1161w, https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karin-1549x2048.jpg 1549w, https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karin-1568x2074.jpg 1568w, https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karin.jpg 1932w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 774px) 100vw, 774px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0<strong>My Lovely Friend for 45 years and More<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The year was&nbsp;1980,&nbsp;my Hal finally had gotten his&nbsp;long awaited&nbsp;transfer back to his beloved Seattle. We had found a beautiful Condo on the east side of Seattle in the outskirts of&nbsp;Bellevue, Cougar Mountain, all in trees Townhomes. It had everything we&nbsp;had wanted.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>My Hal, while visiting his Ophthalmologist Dr.&nbsp;Milam&nbsp;had found me a job and after my interview with their manager, I knew I would like this job: I would again be working with numbers, accounting, the kind of work I like. The first few days, sitting in a corner in the hallway by a desk writing on a&nbsp;spreadsheet&nbsp;the&nbsp;numbers&nbsp;from the fee slips patients would give me on their way out and tallying them up at night. I also could&nbsp;observe&nbsp;the doctors going by and their assistants coming through with patients, going&nbsp;to different rooms. Some would give me a glance or a smile.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I noticed one special assistant, as I found out in a few days, that she was the assistant of Dr.&nbsp;Reavelle, a lady named Karin.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I liked her the minute I saw her. She was quiet,&nbsp;dignified&nbsp;and reminded me of my beloved sister Friedl. She wore a mid-leg length, two piece knitted dress in light&nbsp;brown,&nbsp;she had black hair, a nice figure and carried herself like my Friedl. I would love to meet her, talk with&nbsp;her&nbsp;and get to know her in time.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Time went on and I got my wish.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I met Karin &#8211; we met,&nbsp;talked&nbsp;and made eye contact when she&nbsp;would come&nbsp;out of her corner. We had nice conversations when she was between patients&nbsp;or&nbsp;on a break. I had such interest in Karin that I told my husband Hal about her. As we became acquainted, I looked forward to&nbsp;see&nbsp;Karin on the days she worked for Dr.&nbsp;Reavelle.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>It developed into a wonderful friendship while I was working there over the years. We would get together outside our workplace, enjoy shopping, style shows,&nbsp;lunches&nbsp;or a glass of bubbly together at the&nbsp;newly built Hyatt Hotel. All the wonderful things one does with a loving friend or sister. But since Karin was thirty years younger than I, it was more like a wonderful daughter. We spent hours together, laughing, talking, shopping in Seattle and never got&nbsp;tired&nbsp;spending quality time together.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>After 14 years I&nbsp;retired,&nbsp;the first time, but we stayed friends. It was then a great&nbsp;friendship between Karin, her wonderful husband Karl,&nbsp;me&nbsp;and my Hal. We had many memories together. I went back to work at the Eye Clinic some more years after my beloved Friedl died. Karin, my dearest&nbsp;friend&nbsp;had asked me. It helped me tremendously&nbsp;to manage&nbsp;my grief.&nbsp;Finally&nbsp;I retired and settled into that life, but our friendship continued, we got to be a happy circle of four great friends. Dinners at either homes, dinners out,&nbsp;maybe an&nbsp;evening at a concert or at the Rep. Theater in Seattle or an evening&nbsp;visiting together.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Now, in my final years having lost my Hal eight years ago, feeling sad and lonely at times, Karin is always there in thought and often in person and with Karl.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I am&nbsp;writing&nbsp;short stories for a website, another dear friend who had invited me to do this to keep my days filled with something meaningful and enjoyable for me. When the stories&nbsp;appear&nbsp;I can always count on Karin to write something nice or something complementing into the comment column. Karin is a lot of times the only one.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Karin and Karl&nbsp;live now&nbsp;a&nbsp;three hour&nbsp;drive away from me, but they do&nbsp;come and visit&nbsp;me most times when they drive across the mountain passes to visit their family members or their friends.\u202f<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A&nbsp;45 year&nbsp;friendship! A long and loving time in my life, which started with a glimpse of a lady in a brown knit dress, reminding me of my beloved Friedl. How Karin has enriched my life and still does. Soon, we can say, we have had this loving&nbsp;bond&nbsp;46 wonderful years!<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Thank you from the heart my dearest Karin and Karl! You have enriched my life in so many ways.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0My Lovely Friend for 45 years and More\u00a0 The year was&nbsp;1980,&nbsp;my Hal finally had gotten his&nbsp;long awaited&nbsp;transfer back to his beloved Seattle. We had found a beautiful Condo on the east side of Seattle in the outskirts of&nbsp;Bellevue, Cougar Mountain, all in trees Townhomes. It had everything we&nbsp;had wanted.&nbsp; My Hal, while visiting his Ophthalmologist &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/31\/ilona-cole-guest-author-story-193\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ilona Cole, Guest Author, Story 193&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}