Our friendship began about forty years ago. A mutual acquaintance put us in touch with one another. Actually, there was a group of four; myself and three other aspiring women writers, two of whom lived in California, another in Massachusetts. The latter was the only one I ever met in person, when we drove there once, from a holiday vacation in New Hampshire, and that too was many years ago, over thirty in fact. And she is now long dead. One of the two in California didn't maintain the conversation we all shared by mail after the first decade, and I've no idea what became of her.

And the third remained faithful to our correspondence, and regular letters went back and forth between us for decades. For a little while we lost touch, when we went abroad to live for a number of years. But about five years ago I discovered she was using email to connect with those she had extensive geographic friendships with and we re-connected, taking up where we left off, as it were.

But not exactly, since so much time had elapsed from our original decades of bringing one another up to date on what was happening with ourselves, our families, our writing passions. Our children skipped from being teen-agers to middle-age. She had two children and they produced two grandchildren. We had three children and they produced one grandchild. She is a little older than I am, consequently her grandchildren are older than ours is; they are concluding the final stages of their academic education in their professions of choice, and ours is just preparing to enter university.

Her husband died from complications of diabetes after years of struggling to survive the many afflictions that overtook him, a year ago. In the interim, after his retirement and their leisure time permitting, they travelled extensively as tourists around the world. Until it came to a point when he was no longer able to suppress the pain and anxiety he was under, in favour of quenching their curiosity. She is now alone in the house that they lived in for so many years. She has remained active in her literary-arts community all this time, and she has had many like-minded acquaintances outside the U.S. that she maintains contact with. She has won her share of recognition as a writer, and has felt profound satisfaction in that part of her life.

Her health, never the best, has been impressing upon her the realities of old age and incapacitation due to chronic illness, lately. Her arthritis and neuropathy that plagues her as a result of her own diabetes has made it increasingly difficult to get around. And although we regularly communicate in light little reminders that we are still here, I wasn't surprised to find in my mailbox a greeting card and letter from her, using the old medium of delivery we had once depended on to maintain contact with old friends.