even cowgirls get the blues

I am grieving, and I don't want to talk about it. And it's very difficult for me to post about it, because it's private.

In less than a month, I have lost the two men, both in their eighties, that have meant so much to me - that I had, and will always have, so much love for. Especially in the eight years since my father died.

My friend, Major Bobby, died on Friday. Such an unlikely friendship, and yet, even tho he left a partner of several decades, in a way, we chose each other. I'm playing this lovely song now.





And yet, because I feel that the God of my Understanding has a good sense of irony,when I went to find Old Man on YouTube, inexplicably, this popped up:



(the irony being, my brother is the keyboard player).



All photos by me - or perhaps by my ex, David, I can't remember if I used a tripod, or asked him to shoot them - on his ranch in New Mexico. 50,000 acres of fields, streams, mountains, and lakes. A proper, working, cattle ranch. He is still a friend, and a friend of my husband's now, too, and I hope to return there someday: he's offered that my husband can fish with him there.

When I got the call that we were losing him - suddenly and unexpectedly, he had just come home from the hospital, I had just spoken to him, was just about to come visit, when he took a turn for the worse in the night - I called my mom, in Florida, to cry to her. Bless her cotton socks, her response was so English. Along the lines of, Jill, pull up your socks: when you get to my age you get... and she struggled to find the right word, and finally said, numb. (That's another song for another post). And I said but mom, he was my friend.

'What can I say, Jill,' she sighed. 'Maybe you need to get yourself some younger friends.'

There is so much I want to say about Major Bobby, my friend, but I can't. Not yet. Dear, daer Bobby: how I wish you were here.