Eleven years. So she was 79 when she drove here from Woodside.

Mary (her website) was a musician, a composer, and a woman much admired for her gentle graciousness. She was also a knitter. That post is about the day we got the call that my mother-in-law’s cancer had finally taken her, and Mary’s showing up for us, having no idea, meant so much.

She was 90. Her funeral yesterday was overflowing with people come to pay their respects. I went, but there were so many stories to be told by the speakers that I just could not wait to mingle afterwards; I absolutely had to get home and take my next antibiotics dose. I’m not messing up on those, and I didn’t have it with me.

Thus my surprise at church today when I did a double take, stopped dead in my tracks in astonishment, and then threw myself into Kim’s arms. Then Karl’s. Thirty-two years since they’d moved to Colorado, thirty-two, our kids were babies together! But they had come. Because of Mary and all the love she had brought into their lives, all these years later, they had to come.

We’d lived here about six months when Karl had mentioned to someone that the person they were talking about was actually his great-grandfather. Richard heard that and went, wait–that’s my wife’s great grandfather! And that’s how we found out we were second cousins.

And old friends too, catching up. Man, it felt so good.

One last gift from our Mary, and you could just see her smiling up there over it.