From: robgood@bestweb.net   
      
   32 or 33 years ago, my friend Kathy (wife of Ralph) introduced me to Bob   
   Youngman, and we quickly hit it off and started doing things together.  After   
   about a decade he met an OL and they lived together at various addresses over   
   the next 20 years, and I    
   didn't see him as often as previously -- pretty much exclusively just with   
   Ralph & Kathy.  But then when I needed a new housemate, Kathy (who'd put me   
   together with my original housemate, who died) put me together with Bob, since   
   his relationship with    
   Jeannie had been cooling for years.  So in August 2018 he moved in with me and   
   his very old long-haired chihuahua, who was euthanized in March of 2020, and   
   he felt like close family except he didn't go for huggy-kissy stuff.   
      
   Kathy died this April of a ruptured appendix (from medical neglect on her   
   part), but my loss of her was mitigated by the fact that for months she'd been   
   pushing people other than Ralph away, even Bob, talking about moving to Maine,   
   seeming like she was    
   getting ready to check out.  Shortly thereafter, Bob caught the Covid-19   
   (confirmed by RNA) that'd gone thru his church in Dover, including the pastor,   
   and Bob's case was fulminant because his blood sugar was just then newly   
   escaping control by his    
   antidiabetes drugs, so after a short period in which it seemed like a chest   
   cold that was getting better, he progressed to the inflammatory-coagulatory   
   crisis the bad cases are known for.   
      
   Ralph was devastated by the loss of his wife of close to 50 years, whom he'd   
   assumed would outlive him, but at least he has more of a life, it seems, than   
   I do.  I'm going to have to find someone else to share expenses with, or move   
   out on my own, and    
   although I've been in this place only 5 years, it feels like home now, and has   
   certain advantages.  Some of you may know the story of Festivus, a thing made   
   up by the father of a writer who later made it famous by adapting it for   
   "Seinfeld".  It was    
   occasioned by a fairly sudden death of someone with a circle of friends and   
   family, to mitigate whose grief this man instituted "a festivus for the rest   
   of us", by which they would do whatever crazy or not-so-crazy things he   
   decreed, for as long as he    
   decreed, to help them over that time.  Festivus was declared again any time he   
   felt necessary to mark other grief or events.   
      
   So I'm looking for suggestions on what to do as a festivus for the rest of us,   
   or at least the rest of me.  It needs to be cheap.  It also shouldn't involve   
   a lot of eating, because the one bad thing about living with Bob was its   
   effect on my diet,    
   resulting in a gain of 15 or more lbs.; I don't have much appetite now, but   
   it's starting to come back to normal.  It'll help that the pandemic has ended;   
   Bob's church got thru almost all of it, but its tail had quite the sting.   
      
   Bob in Andover NJ   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)