by Trudy Duivenvoorden-Mitic –
When Katherine Napolitano and Agnes Weicker start talking about their remarkable 85-year-friendship, memories and laughter roll easily off the tongue. They met at age six on the school doorstep in rural Muirland, Saskatchewan, a time they both remember with great affection: in the coldest winter months the inkwells in the one-room schoolhouse would freeze overnight and during summer the children rode their horses to school.
Young Katherine loved horses and was a fearless rider. “She would come galloping bareback into the schoolyard at her horse’s top speed, her curly red hair streaming behind,” Agnes recalls with a chuckle.
Young Agnes tended more towards reading, painting and writing in her diary. Both girls came from loving families and throughout childhood they visited back and forth between their homesteads. As teens they both played on the Muirland Ladies Baseball Team. Agnes pitched; Katherine was the catcher.
Finishing high school meant boarding in Rosetown, some 15 miles away, so the friends rented a room there together and came home on the weekends. Katherine remembers their mothers loading them up with groceries. “Your mum’s relish and my mum’s jam,” Agnes recalls. “From Monday to Wednesday we did well but from then to Friday we lived on cornflakes and bologna!”
After school the friends embarked on separate paths and over the next several years saw far less of each other. Each became immersed in her own life, and distance was always an obstacle. Agnes became a teacher and taught in several prairie towns before settling in Kelowna, where she married, raised two sons and taught for many years. Katherine moved on to Toronto, marriage, and a successful career with Trans Canada Airlines (now Air Canada).
Several years later Agnes made an epic journey east to pay Katherine a visit. “It was just like we’d never been apart,” she remembers.” We had all the old pictures out, and we laughed and cried together.” Such is the flow and ebb of deep friendship, sometimes up front as circumstances allow, sometimes patiently on hold in the background, but always there, prized and unwavering.
The friendship surged again when both couples gravitated to Vancouver Island in retirement. When Agnes suddenly became a widow, it was Katherine who provided stalwart support. When Agnes’ second husband, John, later proposed to her, it was Katherine who urged her to follow her heart. When Katherine lost her husband in 2014, it was Agnes who read Psalm 23 at his funeral.
The friends are clear on what sustains their closeness. Katherine cites a shared history and prairie background. “We have so many memories that only we know.”
Agnes agrees, adding: “You’ve known my parents, my siblings, my first husband and my present family. We understand each other. Communicating and staying in touch is so important.”
Katherine nods. “Especially later in life. When you’re younger, you branch out and life is busy but in later years you’re more on your own and then it’s great to have someone you’ve known for so long. Growing up, we lived three miles apart and now we’re only three blocks apart in beautiful Sidney. It’s wonderful.”
Both friends are healthy, active and independent. They meet often for coffee and leisurely beach walks. They cherish the past but live in the present. They laugh easily and embrace every new day.
Photo by www.nuttycake.com.
