My Friend Called Me The Other Night
She’s the one whose husband died suddenly some months ago when she’d ducked out to collect her daughter from the airport…
We speak on the phone every few weeks, Jen and I.
Most of what we talk about is family stuff, and outings we have enjoyed, maybe books we have read.
She is always much busier than I because she’s lived most of her life in the same city, so her friendship base includes people from high school, university, and the workforce, as well as wine groups and the likes.
I met her through my husband. In fact after she met me, it was Jen who suggested he should marry me!
They studied together at Adelaide University, but my husband had also been coached at a boys’ gymnastic club by her father, so that added to the friendship.
Jen and I never run out of things to talk about. She is super-involved with her grandchildren, spends weekends babysitting them when their parents are out, and for the littlest one, opts to have him several times a week while his mother, a doctor, is at work.
As he is just turned two, I never tire of what he is up to. I find the year between two and three mind-blowing insofar as somehow they sort out (intuit) some amazing linguistic rules, ones that often allow them to go from angelic, to having a mind of their own (read, SORRY, that changes to I NOT SORRY!).
It’s a good sign!
So we talked of lunch dates, wines she’d enjoyed, and that led into her telling me about little chats she has had with her dead husband.
“I’m not losing it,” she assured me. “It’s just that sometimes I feel his presence and I just exchange a few words, whether I am enjoying the wine we bought together, and if I should buy some more. That way he knows I am alright.”
“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
That led me to ask how things really are for her.
Is she happy to stay on in her home?
Does she feel safe?
Is she lonely?
