Pages

Saturday, December 20, 2014

LOVE AND DEATH: CHRISTMAS 1964.

"Toots" Vestal lay in state in my Funeral Home on that cold foggy Indiana Christmas day.  A fine cold mist in the air.  Not a single person called, perhaps due to the weather and the holiday. Toots and his wife, Dorothea, while not loners did not have a wide circle of friends.  

Toots, a veteran of The Great War, had met Dorothea while they were employed by the same hotel in Capitol City.  They had married late in life.  They were not a handsome couple if I remember but they were devoted to each other.

 Dorothea spent that entire day sitting in a folding chair in front of her husband's casket, refusing an offer of water or conversation, a manifestation of that love and devotion.  I have seen all sorts of grief by too many widows.  Dorothea's was the most sincere.

And I could not possibly have foreseen that 50 years later to the day, I would be sitting alone in front of a computer in Denver writing  about a love I observed long ago.






No comments:

Post a Comment