2020 Tuesday — Friends

I’m not sure how we managed to line-up shortest to tallest, but we did. The shortest is Dorothy, a friend we’ve known for years. She and her first husband Stan lived down the street from us in our old neighborhood, which is the neighborhood we moved back to 2-years ago. Dorothy and Stan had 3 kids; their oldest is Joe and he is the tallest one in my photo. Stan & Dorothy divorced years ago and somehow we managed to stay friends with both of them. They both remarried and at times, we’ve been out of touch with both of them. Stan died a couple years ago from kidney cancer.

This evening Dorothy and Mr.Fun & I all went to a restaurant together for dinner. It was the first time any of us had been inside a restaurant in over 2-months. Dorothy has been a widow now since October 2018. As we sat in the restaurant this evening, Dorothy told us that it was 2-years ago today that her husband Herman had his heart attack. It was over four months later in October that Herman died. He was in the hospital that entire time, and she was there with him everyday. We reconnected with Dorothy during that time and then reconnected with her again this past February when her 96-year-old mother died.

Dorothy’s parents lived on the Central Coast in the city of San Luis Obispo all their lives and Dorothy was born and raised in SLO. We were at our Central Coast place in Cayucos in February and we were able to attend the funeral and the meal afterward. (Dorothy is the only living child of her parents; her older brother died of a brain aneurysm when he was a teenager.) A day after her mom’s funeral, we drove out to Dorothy’s parents’ ranch which is on the outskirts of SLO. Since then we’ve stayed in fairly close touch with Dorothy and have talked, texted, and divided & shared orders of “to go” food during this Covid-19 “shelter-at-home” season.

After dinner this evening Dorothy invited us to stop by her son Joe’s house to see the pick-up truck he is rebuilding. That’s when I was able to get this photo.

Good night from SoCal, and tomorrow we will once again head for our little retirement home on the Central Coast.

Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol
and Chloe & Mitzi too