Learn ~ Live ~ Hope: Ginny, Part 13: Ginny the Neighbor

The hardest part of Ginny's death, for me, is that it's been so public and that all of the attention has highlighted Ginny the coach or Ginny the basketball player. And she was an amazing coach and a talented basketball player.

But I got to see the "natural" side of Ginny. I got to see her totally relaxed & overly stressed, sick & tired, and healthy & well. I got to see her being neighborly and shutting herself in to get things done or just be alone. I got to see her frustrated with things and ecstatic about others. In some ways, because of the arrangement with the dogs that meant we saw each other practically every day, she was almost like a sister.

I got to see Ginny down & dirty working in her yard. Ginny had a unique system. She would kind of let her lawn go, mainly due to her travel schedule, and then she would go gang-busters from dusk to dawn for an entire weekend bringing it back to immaculate. She was also known to mow her lawn in the dark; a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do, right?

If she's hearing my thoughts right now, she's laughing along with me at this memory. One day I was in my house and heard the most annoying sound. It was just this repetitive "cough" that made no sense whatsoever. I went outside and she was literally pushing her mower into the ground. That thing was so beyond it's prime and wanted to stall on her so bad, but she just kept making it work. You had to hear it to truly appreciate the lunacy of the moment, but it sounded like a really loud plane puttering out and then getting just enough juice for another push to the finish line. She upgraded to a self-propelled mower soon after.

There are two "islands" between our houses. One of them is on her property and the other is on ours. The tree in the center of our island died and we had it taken down but we never did anything to fill that plat of land. Ginny asked if she could maintain it (in other words, she didn't like a boring old island of dirt) and planted four bushes which will now be a forever memory of our dear neighbor. I'm kind of glad we were lazy about re-landscaping that patch of earth.

I got to enjoy the sounds of Innsbrook Afterhours in the backyard with Ginny. I remember playing badminton while Sugarland was performing. We also went to a couple of Innsbrook After Hours concerts together. I remember her blasting country music while doing yard work; I still liked her, even if I didn't like her taste in music ;-). She knew I had a thing for Bon Jovi and would let me know when he was performing on TV.

Ginny's wardrobe was predictable: she wore University of Richmond athletic gear 90% of the time. I'm pretty sure she owned 100 pair of Nike sneakers. I can only imagine house many UR sweatshirts & t-shirts are in her closet! She was a spider through and through. It's what she wore to work and what she wore for play.

I remember the first game we went to; I couldn't believe it...she was wearing a pant suit and had her hair down looking all professional. Some people have commented that they didn't recognize her in pictures media was posting right after the accident because they'd never seen her with her hair down. Ginny always wore a pony tail. I won't post it because it's upsetting to some people, but one of the very last pictures of her, going up in the balloon, actually makes me smile because I can see that tell-tale ponytail of hers.

Ginny loved Halloween. Most nights we'd never know what time she'd be home, but she was always home in time for trick-or-treating on Halloween. She always had the best candy and would set Maggie and then Maggie & Lexi up on the porch so they could see all the kids. We'd walk the whole neighborhood with Colin and then she'd let us take Maggie up to the veterinarian around the corner for a bone.