14 years ago

This was one of the most memorable events that Victoria and I shared. We were at an A.A. Meeting in Seminole, FL just up the road from where I live with my wife, Em Battreall. It was a night in the first week of June, last year and Victoria came all the way over here from her home in Odessa that night for one very special gift to me. She presented me with my 24 yr. A.A. Recovery Birthday Gold Medallian. It was indeed the highlight of my sobriety (and her's as shared with me a few days after) and in my long time friendship with Victoria. We shared our lives together, as lovers 22 years ago and we also shared our Programs in A.A. recovery with one another. We sponsored other women in recovery and gave our Experience, Strength and Hope as God lead us to do. We championed one another as those special year anniversaries of our sobriety came up and we spoke our stories in A.A. Groups. If you ever had the opportunity to hear Victoria's delivery her Life of Addiction and RECOVERY story, you witnessed not a dry eye in the room, and Her Aura of brilliant white and lavender rays around her. You heard and felt the power of an appointed and annointed Angel of Mercy, Hope and Forgiveness. You were stunned and touched by her very heart spoken to each and every person recovering in the rooms and out still suffering from the depths of agony in lives of addiction. That heart reached out well beyond the boundaries of the rooms she spoke her story and shared in hundreds of meetings through the years. She gave herself to the Purpose she so loved, reaching out and being there, day or night, to anyone who asked for and needed her help to walk them through the insanity across the bridge of the peace of unconditional love and abundance of support inside A.A. and N.A.12 Step Groups, in every town and surrounding areas, in any state she visited or lived in. She herself was At Home There. She made it her mission to help sponsor those who wanted what she had... and they certainly had to work for it. She was not an easy, let it all slide, Sponsor. She was straight up and down the 12 Steps like no body's business. She walked her talk and talked the walk and everyone knew who Victoria (always to me, and never Vicky, as to many) Diamond was before she ever opened the door and walked into the room. I share this because living her life IN Sobriety gave her GREAT Self PRIDE and her life a Deep and Profound PURPOSE. In her words, "It made all my Life make sense, once I found my way into a Life of Sobriety. There is where I learned Who I was, where I came from and why I did what I did and began my road to sanity through forgiveness of myself and others." Being of service to the program and those coming in, going out and back in again, made her heart sing. Just as being an example to her adult children and their children made her eyes shine. She spoke sincerely of how happy She felt to have finally reached that place where she felt she truly was a positive example for her family. Victoria was someone who came in and lived life the hard way and fought to change that flow of energy that presented itself as a brick wall. I truly believe, she did that through all the trials and tribulations of her childhood, relationships, marriages, young motherhood...gracefully growing and changing, the ever loving, fiercly and passionately protective of her boys, grown to Men, her daughter in laws, and as Matriarch, grandmother and great-grandmother. Victoria was overwhelmingly In LOVE with and Devoted to every member of her family. She was someone like no one I'd ever known before, and yet I had known her BEFORE. Before this life, in another life we shared as lovers with shattered hearts pulled apart by torment and death. We agreed that we had found each other again in THIS lifetime... to finally "stay together, in love forever." Well, we sealed the later and yet, not so with staying together. Although, we tried it three different times through 25 years of knowing one another, it just wasn't meant to "stick." Yet, as friends, we made that stick. And my life was that much richer because of it. Two months before her passing to the Other Side of the Veil, we sat together in her tiny mobile home and she shared with me how lucky she felt and grateful to have had all her dear beloveds from many years past and most recent of the past few years, come back into her life again, where she/they created total full circle freindship and love to "stick" again, with each one in her/their own way. And she meant it. She felt blessed by this opportunity to have 45 year old partner's in life, and a few deep loves scattered like stars throughout the years, including and right up until the very last moments of her life, come back into her life again and experience love and friendship and more with two of them. It was something she'd always prayed for yet never thought she'd see. When she shared that with me, I could only say one thing, "How very honored I was to have her come back into my life again and grace it in such a special way." The night she gave me my 24th A.A. Medallion, as she was handing it to me in this picture, was a memory we'd share, transcending anything that had gone before. That night, everything was set right between us, as we sat in my living room after the meeting (the picture of she on the striped chair) and very fittingly, We Returned Ourselves To Love, through the grace and unconditional love of A.A., as was the foundation of solid, common ground we lived our lives upon... no matter where we were or how our paths were separated, that was a constant between us; our lives as recovering addicts walking the 12-Steps through time. Time to heal, time to feel, time to share, time to forgive, time to love and time to live FREE. There will never be another.... like Victoria Elizabeth Diamond, not in this life or any other. I shall love and miss you.... with no end, my dear friend. Lovingly, Your "Gentle Giant", Cydne'

14 years ago

You did a very special presentation in Victoria's Memory. Many will appreciate your work and your thoughtfulness in doing so. I know that I do, and thank you very much. It was done as sweetly as She! I shall add a picture of my own. Thank you for creating the canvas for our memories to express themselves. Love and Light, Rev. Cydne' Battreall