Passings...

I had some bad news last night -- an email from my daughter-in-law telling me that my son's father, my first husband, died Friday night. So what, you might ask. After all, we've been divorced for nearly 50 years. But we'd remained friends of a sort, staying in touch, talking from time to time and he visited a couple of times when I lived in Napa, when he was traveling on business in the area. He was a good man -- not his fault he was saddled with a child bride. The issues in our marriage were mine, as I am the first to admit. I'm the one who wanted out. Still, there remained a bond of some sort between us. He was about 5 years older than me, as I recall, and since I haven't heard from him in a couple of years, I didn't know he'd been ill or anything about his health issues. This is the first of my contemporaries -- people I actually know -- who have died in old age, so it's a milestone of sorts. Not a particularly pleasant one, but a milestone nonetheless.