A New Friend

Today I went to Kroger to get my prescriptions filled for the month. As I was waiting at the counter, I walked over to look in the book section. An elderly gentleman approached the book section and began talking to me about a new store down the street. He was very engaging and had a very sweet smile. What started out as a exchange of greetings turned into a very long conversation about his life. It seemed that he lost his wife to cancer and had been coming to the grocery store as a outlet to get out of the house. He appeared to be very lonely as he told me exciting stories about how he and his wife had travelled the world and raised their children..all of which had grown up and moved away to start their own families, and about his grandchildren that lived too far to see more than twice a year. My heart went out to him as I saw the loneliness in his eyes... He invited my family to go to his church and told me about his plans to go to a retreat for widows in a few weeks. I tried to be supportive and suggested that he start a blog...while I listened to the words leaving my lips, I quickly realized that I had lost my mind! He is 82 years old!!! HA!!! To my surprise, he was very interested in the blog as he was once a photographer for the AJC in their earlier years..and he asked me all the details of how to do a blog. I told him that I was no computer person(my husband is though), but did know the site that would give him a template. After we finished our conversation, he took my email and the blog address and told me that he was going to call his son and get a blog started. As I walked away, I realized that maybe I did him a great service..maybe I helped a lonely man get a new outlet on his life! I told him that most people would be so interested in hearing the stories he had told me about his wife. They were beautiful stories and she seemed to be a wonderful person. He agreed to email me his blog address which I will post ..maybe his memories will be a great comfort to him and possibly help him to work through his grief, and maybe even bring his family closer to him. If he writes as well as he talks, I am sure I will not be the only one that reads his daily blog..stay tuned...especially you widowers out there.