In Memoriam

We wound up this week's world heritage tour with a memorial. The setting was an Italian social club, and the memorialized was a person who was one of my favorite customers at the restaurant where I used to work. His lovely bride is an old old friend of mrguy. Such a great couple, with a son who attends Berklee. Attendees included people from all corners of my life, as I mentioned earlier.

I'm not sure how well I navigated the answers to why I was there and not mrguy. It's chemo week and his goal for yesterday was to sit upright, watch baseball and read a book. He's doing really well, otherwise. But if you're hearing me say that and I'm all cool with it and it's catching people off guard? I didn't know that so many people didn't know, so it came as an unwelcome surprise to some. I've had time to process and am happy to have every day. Really. But when the widow spoke about how she was supposed to grow old with her person and wasn't going to get to do that, I really lost it. Luckily I was in the back row, and mostly out of sight from people I work with as I bent into my kleenex and wept. 

There was a raffle in between speakers at the memorial, and I came home with a bottle of wine.

I mingled, I cried, I had to go. Met up with my new friend from the club for a beer. She is off for a few months in Norway, so this was a last visit of the season, so to speak. She had missed Scottish Night. I of course performed a full recitation of the events of the night. And then she told me about how she'd solved an irrigation issue at the local community garden. Suuuuuper interesting solution, directing rainwater into reservoirs in raised beds. The plants find what they need, reaching down into the reservoirs, and there is no evaporation because the water is underground. I wonder if we could do something similar for the island in the middle of our street. Just a thought.