CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE...

Last night I told my adopted grandmother how much my local sister had hurt me with her remarks, and she looked at me with wide eyes and said she could scarcely believe it. My sister had come over to speak to her as soon as she heard the news; she herself wasn't home, so my sister had gone to the new widow next door, sat with her, and cried and cried over our break-up.

That wasn't someone who didn't think. She just wasn't paying attention to my feelings when she made dinner... perhaps because her own were deep enough.

And maybe, like my oldest sister, she found that the collapse of something that has lasted so long and seemed so good -- as indeed it was -- brought doubts about her own marriage, her own mortality. Because it is a death, much as my neighbor widow hates the thought, and our saying it. It's different, but we too bury our hopes and dreams of the future, we bury our selves as we thought we were, we suddenly have to think about who we are if we are alone -- and everyone tells us a new life is waiting for us. But we can't get there without walking over the grave of the old one.

And that, my friends, is no picnic. Necessary, in our case, but not nice.