Scattered

These are just random photos I took in Paris years ago because I'm having trouble focusing this morning. No, it's not because of my cataracts. It's because another friend of ours has passed away. His widow phoned us yesterday to tell us. These are our neighbors who own the house across the street from ours but whose main residence has always been in Blois. Bernard, the patriarch of a fairly large clan of descendants, gave up the ghost peacefully, in his sleep, his wife said. He was born in April 1930, so he was 94 years old. He had been in an assisted-living facility for about a year.

Bernard and his wife were the people here in the hamlet who welcomed us with open arms back in June 2003, when we arrived from the U.S. They've invited us to many big garden parties over the two decades we've lived here. They gave us the keys to there house here. I felt pretty emotional about all this yesterday, mostly because Bernard's widow was in tears when Walt talked to her yesterday morning. (I was out running errands.) She has four daughters and one son, plus many grown grand-children and innumerable great-grandchildren who live in Blois or in nearby villages, so she'll have plenty of support. She's approaching 90 years old, but you would never believe it if you saw her and talked to her. Her general health and her mind are good.

Bernard's oldest daughter called yesterday at noontime and I talked to her. She didn't know her mother had called us a few hours earlier to give us the news. She told me that the funeral would take place in the cathedral in Blois next Tuesday, but that the burial would be down here, not in Blois. I'm not sure where Bernard grew up. Maybe it was here. His wife grew up just across the river from Saint-Aignan, in Noyers-sur-Cher. Maybe Bernard did too. They bought their house down here in about 1970 to have it as a summer place.

Yesterday afternoon I took Tasha out for her walk as usual. We walked out into the vineyard a ways, but the cloudy sky looked threatening, so we didn't go far. As we were walking back to the house, we saw another neighbor driving up the road toward us, coming home from work. He stopped the car, as he always does, when he saw Tasha running loose on the road. He doesn't want to run over her. He put down his window and we talked for a few minutes. He knew Bernard, but not well, because he's new to the hamlet and because for the last two or three years Bernard didn't get to come down here from Blois very often.

Then the mayor of the village, also a neighbor, drove up in the opposite direction. She stopped to say hello. I said something about Bernard having passed away, and she hadn't heard. I was surprised Bernard's family hadn't yet contacted her. She wasn't shocked to learn that Bernard had died because somebody over in Noyers who knew him well had told her he wasn't expected to live much longer. I told the mayor that Bernard's daughter had said the funeral would be in Blois next week, but the burial would be down here.

She said she and her husband would be out of town. When I mentioned that I was surprised that the burial would be in our village (of which she's the mayor), she said What? Where? She was caught off-guard and stunned that she didn't know about those plans. She sped off in the direction of the village hall, saying she would call Bernard's family in Blois and see what should could do for them. I'll go to the burial next week but not to the funeral in Blois. We have company coming next Wednesday (more about that later) so we'll also be busy getting things ready for them.