Taking the next step

Dear Mary,

Your memory about how we can only do one thing at a time and that Barbara hasn't

yet gone to a restauarnt alone reminds me of a touching evening a couple of weeks ago when

I reunited with an old, old friend whose husband passed away almost three years ago. Over the years we had drifted apart, but when I came across her husband's obituary online I called and asked her to go with me to a wonderful French restaurant in Hanstings-on-Hudson, Le Buffet de la Gare. I asked her to meet me there, but she suggested I come to her place first and we would go together. Pretty soon I understood why....it had been "their" place, a routine of life they cherished as their weekly rendezvous.... and she had not been back as a widow. Couldn't do it. But when we walked in together and she was greeted like a long lost friend––which she truly was––the spell was broken and she knew that she could go again and again, with me or even on her own. It was a step forward and a way to bring some joy back in her life of a kind she had missed.