Picture This.....

If you ever watched “The Golden Girls”, you would hear Sophia start all of her stories like this. So picture this. The year is 1995. Charles and I just sold our house on Lookout Mountain and we moved to a rental house on Suck Creek Mountain. Charles was so excited because he was going to build our house. He said it would probably be his last and it was. It turned out that the winter of 1995-1996 was a bad one. He stood out in the cold and rain waiting for the different contractors, and he got really sick in January 1996. The doctor was treating him for the flu. It turned out to be a virus that had attacked his heart. I’ll not go into detail here, but our house was half finished and we were living in rent and I was told that Charles was dying. Anyway to the good part. Charles lived because of a miracle from God and we moved into the house. We only moved in the upper level. I really didn’t think that Charles would live to see the completion of this house. We moved into it in October 1996. I guess around February 1997 Charles asked me what I wanted to do now. I had not been able to work because of his illness, and he suggested that I get my real estate license. So in April 1997 I became licensed in Tennessee. I was really scared. My first clients wanted to look at $300,000-$400,000 homes. I’m sure today that number would be much more. I was on my way to meet them, and I called Charles to tell him I was about to throw up. I told him I felt like I was more of a $50,000 woman instead of such a high number. Charles responded to me, “Diane, you are going to see some of the most beautiful houses you have ever seen. You have the key. Open the door and just enjoy.” I never thought about it that way. I did and my first house I sold was $375,000.00. I miss hearing Charles’ point of view on things. I guess you could say, he marched to a different drummer—but it worked for me. DR 3/16/14