Mom's friend Evelyn

Yesterday, mom called me to say that her old friend Evelyn had died. It had happened more than a week before she found out, when Evelyn's niece found her name and number among her aunt's things. I rarely look at the obituaries in our paper, so I wouldn't have been able to tell Mom about the funeral. She missed it.

Evelyn was in her 80s, Mom said, I don't know how old exactly. She was several years older than my mother. The two of them met when they worked together as secretaries in the 1950s. The last time Mom saw Evelyn was when I drove her up to her house for a visit, almost 2 years ago. Mom was in town partly for a dinner & opera birthday evening I'd planned for her, partly to see a couple of her old friends, and partly to accompany me doing some genealogical research--we visited all the old houses she lived in when her family was still here. In the last week or so, Mom and I had been planning her next trip up here in mid-February, mostly to see Evelyn.

Now both of her old friends, the ones she and I drove around to see over a day or two in early March of 2002, are gone. One died later that year, in November. And now Evelyn, just a couple weeks ago. I have pictures of those visits back in March 2002, somewhere. They're still on the disposable camera I was carrying around that day, still undeveloped. I need to find it.