Lunch With Ben's Best Buddy

Was cold when we got up this morning...43° outside. We sent for a walk with Jean and her dogs, then sat on my patio while the dogs played in the yard. Jean keeps asking me to go to our community Christmas Party with her on December 14th. I'm thinking about it. Ben and I never attended and last year I didn't feel like doing anything since it had only been 6 months since Ben had passed away, but I'm thinking about maybe going this year. They serve dinner, have a Santa for the kids in the neighborhood, have raffles, etc. My friend Ed, who was Ben's best buddy, is coming over today and we are going to go out for pizza. Ben and Ed worked together years ago and were friends for over 35 years. He really misses Ben and he keeps in touch with me and we get together now and then for lunch. I was going to invite Jean to go with us, but she had to go to a memorial service today. What's so good about Ed keeping in touch with me is that we have learned at our grief support group that we are now living a “different” life than we shared with our spouses. We now have friends who never knew our mates and so we cannot share the old life we had with our new friends, but with friends like Ed, a person who REALLY knew Ben, we can sit and talk about Ben for hours and share stories about him and that is good for the healing process. After Ed left, Hiker and I went down to the park for awhile. It actually got up to 81° here today.