A Dear Friend Has Gone

This morning our dear friend and neighbor, Dorothy "Dot" Grim, passed from this Earth. Not only was Dot like a mother to my husband but she was like a grandmother to our children and became a friend of mine. She was at our wedding in 1996, with her husband Walt, and we did many things together over the years. As I write this blog, I can see the entire front of her cottage-style house from my office window, as I always do.

Whenever I didn't blog for a time, Dot would be the first to call or e-mail me. "Catherine, when are you going to blog again?" she'd say in her feisty voice. [See also my blog entry Our Friend Dot] Dot didn't miss a trick, always seeing the happenings on Main Street from her kitchen window and in recent years keeping in touch more by internet. Even though we often saw her, my husband more than me, we generally communicated by e-mail. I will, and have, missed that. Dot did not want a memorial service of any kind so over the past few weeks I have been saying goodbye slowly. Oddly, in this morning's mail, an unexpected Christmas card arrived. It was from Dot.

Last week when we saw her, when she could still speak faintly, she asked us both, "are you happy in Kentucky?" We said yes and that we would be going back soon. That seemed to reassure her. My husband and I have understood for a long time that our lives on Main Street, if not in this town, just won't be the same without Dot here.

Before we were married, my husband never put up Christmas candles in the windows and it left a dark hole in our historic village at the holidays. Dot and Walt encouraged, no, badgered, Temple to do so. He finally did. She was the first to call. "You joker, it's about time you got those candles up!" Every year since we have known when it is time to put up our lights because we have followed Dot's lead. This season, as she has been in the hospital, her house has been dark at night. On Sunday I badgered my husband to put ours up, even though we are leaving shortly after Christmas for Kentucky. And so he did, for Dot. And now as I write this, a December snow falls around her house like soft, frozen tears.