My Husband died in September 2012. He would have been 60 on the 31st March and a few weeks before that date I got a cheque out of the blue for just over £700. The company had paid one of Stephen’s insurances wrongly and the cheque represented the shortfall plus interest.
Pat has been our very best friend since God was a boy and wore short trousers so I phoned and invited her to lunch for Stephen’s birthday. Not for us the “eat all you can” Chinese for £7. Nor the special cheap lunch menu at the Indian restaurant.
We dined in style at the Café Rouge. This is a chain of restaurants serving French food and Stephen and I always went there for Birthdays, Anniversaries etc. It’s not the Ritz but very much more upmarket than our usual haunts.
They serve small bowls of olives, peanuts, cocktail onions etc. while you look at the menu and then take your order. It was really nice. OK 3 courses plus wine and coffee came to £57 but we celebrated Stephen. Not the person who died but the lovely memories and fun we all had when he was alive.
Stephen loved flowers. He did not like funeral flowers as he thought that flowers were for the living not the dead, but we had flowers at home most weeks. He arranged them as he said if I did it they looked like very tall soldiers at the back and midgets at the front. They did always look nice. Not bad for a rough and gruff South East London builder!
Anyway when Pat turned up to go to lunch she brought a huge bunch of flowers. She told me they were for Stephen as he loved flowers. They were not a bit morbid. Sunflowers, Spring Chrysanthemums a complete riot of yellow and gold. Pat helped me arrange them so they looked good 🙂
It wasn’t the awful, sad day that I had envisaged it was going to be. Yes I had a few tears when Pat had gone home, but not for long I sat on the sofa with the dogs and drifted off into a pleasant doze. That’s wine at lunch time for you
Love from Gill xx