Tuesday, May 30, 2023
My wife Bonnie and I have many fond memories of the times we spent with Carol and Ted during the years we lived in the North Country. The warmest are the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners at their home when Carol would always roast a goose. She had a dry, but very funny sense of humor. One Thanksgiving she noticed that I was wearing two different shoes. She chased me around the house with a camera to record my fashion faux pas for posterity. Then there were times when the Linns, the Barons, and a number of other couples would go either to Ottawa or Burlington to celebrate their wedding anniversaries, all of which fell within a few days of one another in June. On one of those trips, we watched the movie The Four Seasons about a group of friends whose bonds of affection survive and indeed thrive despite one of them getting divorced. Although their quirks were exaggerated for comic effect in the film, we all identified with the love these couples felt for each other. During the pandemic, we regularly reunited via zoom. At first Carol seemed like her old self, but then she joined the calls less frequently and said very little. That was the prelude to the dementia that descended upon her in her final years. I remember Ted phoning me and and crying as he told me that she had been moved to a memory care facility. He has lost his loving spouse and we have lost a dear friend.
