I teased Ann at church today: I liked her red necklace. I told her it looked like she’d brought her own snack to church, just to make sure she didn’t get hungry–it looked like a string of licorice.
Ann, sweet elderly lady that she is, guffawed.
I know her grandson and his wife; they have two little girls, one shy, one I can sometimes get to laugh or smile back at me.
I know Ann’s daughter, although, not so much; she visits often enough that I’ve had the occasional conversation with her. It would take me awhile to think of her name. But Phyllis knew it, and we know each other certainly by sight and by friendliness, and as Phyll and her husband were bringing us home from the airport Monday night, they mentioned that the woman’s husband had very suddenly very unexpectedly died.
He did *what*? Ann, I could see; she’s of the World War Two generation and pretty frail. But her thin healthy son-in-law?
Ann’s daughter was there in church today, and I went up to her and told her I’d heard and I was so sorry. She hugged me back. I told her we’d been away–Baltimore, Vermont… that I’d only just found out.
Where in Vermont?
And it turns out she’d been where we’d been, just a month ahead of us. Burlington, the Ben and Jerry’s plant, the teddy bear factory and the Lake Champlain Chocolates next door. And, get this, she got to eat one of those cider doughnuts over at Cider Hollow.
I haven’t been where she’s been in her loss. But somehow it was gratifying to her that we’d been where she’d been when she was having a good time.