Yesterday, I got the urge to look up a woman who was a friend to a gawky youth in the early 1960’s. She would have been only four years my senior, but in those days she was a grownup, while I was just a teenager. In fact, she, and her future husband, used to drive up and down the roads in and around Dalston as entertainment on weekend nights, just like “American Graffiti”. A couple of times, they let me go along for the ride.

To my dismay, I discovered that she had died at the end of December in 2018. Unconsciously, I knew this to be true because every time we passed their home on the way to Barrie from Midland on Hwy 93, I felt that she wasn’t living there anymore. But reading her obituary yesterday hit me straight in the heart. Over the years, I’d wondered how she was doing, especially after her husband died a decade or so ago. I was aware that she was a grandmother, and I knew her grandchildren kept her busy. (How did I know that? I’d rung her once on the telephone during one of my visits back to Ontario when I lived in the UK.) Out of respect for her family situation, I never contacted her again.

Thanks for being my friend, Eleanor. You will live on in my memory, now.