Tag Archives: widowers

Friends Care And Do–

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Writer Wendy’s weekly blog

Today I am going to Biltmore to see the Christmas lights. Today is Epiphany, the proper day on which to mark the end of the 12 days of Christmas. Tomorrow Biltmore will take down the lights.

It is bucketing rain today. A dear friend widowed during COVID has on her bucket list to see the mansion decorated for the holidays. She has a ticket. She meant to go last week, and everyone going with her got sick. Today is the last day she can go. Being a widow means finding the courage to do many things alone that you would have done with a partner (or even over a partner’s objections). My friend took up salsa dancing. She went back to work, taking diverse jobs using all her considerable skills both in office work and in compassionate human care. (She is my parents’ weekly home care assistant.) She does not want to go alone, because Christmas lights on Epiphany are a thing to be enjoyed with a friend.

I dislike Biltmore. But I like my friend. She isn’t a victim; she’s a survivor who helps other people survive. She won’t care if I make fun of some of the opulence she will be so richly enjoying, and I’ll try to tamp down my natural sarcasm about the excesses of rich people’s stuff. These are the spaces we make for one another. These are the things we do for one another.

I am going with her because she does not want to go alone. She has shown kindness to my family, courage in the face of devastating losses, resilience in becoming a great salsa dancer–even though her church friends think it’s a little weird and perhaps too powerful and sexy for a widowed woman–and her determination that her walk with God not be dictated by her circumstances.

She wants to go see the lights at Biltmore today. It is bucketing rain and going to freeze tonight. We are going to see the lights at Biltmore because this is the kind of thing we who care do for each other.

This story may smack of “Ain’t I great taking my friend to do something I don’t care about in the teeth of a winter storm.” But that ain’t it, either.

We are here for each other because we have known each other a long time and understand the limits of human endurance. She wants to see the Christmas lights. She gets to see the Christmas lights. It’s good to have snow tires. It’s good to have friends.

Meet Mark and Sally, Bookshop Sitters

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Mark and Sally Smith are watching the bookshop while Jack and I slip away for a holiday. They originally planned to come last October, when Little Bookstore was published and our original request for shopsitters went viral. In their Memphis house, Mark in the kitchen and Sally in the bedroom each heard on NPR’s Weekend Edition how we were looking for someone to mind the place while we went on book tour, and rendezvoused in the car on the way to church.

“Want to?” asked Mark.

“That would be so much fun,” Sally replied, and Mark fired off an email. Only, instead of sending it from Mark to Jack, he sent it from their Labrador, Red, to our Labrador, Zora.

Andrew at partyThat pretty much guaranteed we were gonna choose them, but it turned out the dates we needed clashed with some family commitments. So Andrew Whalen shopsat instead, and he was wonderful, and Mark and Sally said they’d get up with us next time.

Which is this week. Jack and I are flying to Istanbul for our 15th wedding anniversary, Christmas 2012 and 2013, combined birthdays and Valentine’s Day, plus celebration of Little Bookstore’s success. When we knew we wanted to go, we called Mark and Sally.

“You really want to?” Mark asked Sally, with his hand over the phone.

“In a heartbeat,” Sally said.

IMG_3644That’s how this couple rolls. Both lost their life partners several years ago, and Sally was volunteering as a docent at the Memphis Public Library, and attending a book club there, when Mark walked in.

“I don’t remember what book it was, I don’t remember what she said about it, I don’t remember a thing about that night except that Sally was sitting there taking up all my brain space,” he said.

He asked her out. Sally, primed ahead of time by friends, said, “I’ll drive myself and meet you there.”

15 months later, they formed a partnership. And they still go to book clubs. And out to dinner, but in one car.

They drove here Friday past to get their feet wet running the shop one whole day, before Jack and I abandon them to ValKyttie’s tender mercies and fly off. Since Sally has been staffing the Memphis Library’s secondhand books store for a few hours each week, and Mark never met a fuzzy creature he didn’t know how to charm, the place is in good hands. As Sally said, “I’ve always loved books, and I’ve always enjoyed people, so I kinda always thought I’d run a bookstore someday.”

And now she is. So come visit Sally and Mark if you’re in the area. They’ll stay through the last Saturday in April, then head back to Memphis because they have a hot ticket to attend the Annual Payroll Convention in Grapevine, Texas.

I know, but Mark says it’s wild fun. And we feel good knowing they’ll have no trouble computing sales tax.