Friends invited us for lunch.  They live by the lake, and it was a beautiful day to sit in the shade of a tree to have cold drinks and eat salmon.  They have steps into their house, so we just stayed on the lawn and didn't even go in.  The nursing home have since told me rather severely that I should remember to "slip, slop, slap" because Don got a bit sunburned even though we were in the shade.

I

Don and I were both  very fragile, for two reasons:

Firstly, it was the day Ross would have turned 40, and that was never far from our minds.

Secondly, a complete coincidence, but the friends were people we knew years ago, when we lived at Toronto, and have over the past year picked up that connection again and they have begun to visit Don regularly in the nursing home, and I have visited them myself, and now they invited us for lunch.  Who are they?  Their daughter was Ross's girlfriend through High School and beyond.  For six years, in fact, their daughter was very much a part of our family, and our Ross was in and out of their house just as often.  We as parents of the young couple got to know each other very well indeed, and shared a lot of stories, joys and tribulations over those six years.

So we loved to see pictures of their daughter, now married with children of her own, and hear stories of times past.  It was a time when our loss became very sharp, but we loved hearing about her.

Kathleen, we loved you like our own daughter, and we are glad that you are happy.