After George's death, I'd check in with Diane periodically to say hello and make sure she was OK. Her main concern was generously trying to get rid of all of George's clothing. Problem was, George was bigger than I am and his fashion sense stopped evolving during the 1970's polyester stage. (Undeterred, when we held an 80th birthday party for my Mom in San Antonio, Diane even lugged some of his clothing and a pair of boots along to try and hand it off to various cousins and cousin's spouses.) I finally took a couple tuxedos, thinking I'd get them cut down. When I got them home, however, I found they were nicely moth-eaten (much like George!).
During these visits, I'd get to see everything she'd done to the house. Things like concrete-ing in a flower bed at the front of the house and "planting" plastic flowers. Or the new driveway (which was essentially a layer of concrete over the old, buckled one. Oddly enough, the new driveway has buckled in the same places!). Or the lovely deck off the back porch, highlighted by nails protruding up through the railing, either to keep ne'er-do-wells from storming the deck or to allow plastic ivy to be strung along and through it for that quaint, ivy-covered look. And this is to say nothing of all the decorating and re-decorating that went on inside the house, including the bedroom that was magnolia everything, the mural along the hallway wall that was done or re-done several times, and all kinds of pale green hues in the kitchen.
A few verbal exchanges might illustrate where Diane was in her, umm, thinking. Before George's death, Diane and George were visiting my parent's house one Christmas day. This was when Oliver Stone was shooting his greatest work of fiction, JFK, in Dallas. As my brother Bob resides in Dallas and witnessed some of the shooting (the movie, not the assasination), he mentioned it in a desperate attempt to make conversation with Diane. Midway through it, Diane blurts out, "Who plays Jackie?" Bob replied that those roles were secondary to the plot of the movie and that a no-name actress played the role. Diane stared blankly at Bob for a second and replied, "Who plays Jackie?"
More recently, Diane calls and without saying hello asks, "Bill do you know John Paul?" The Pope? I have no clue who she's talking about and she then says, "John Paul from The Bachelor." Apparently one of the contestants from a season of The Bachelor went to the same high school I did. So I then have to explain that, gee Diane, he's in his 20's and I'm 40, so you know we really weren't at McGuinness at the same time. Her response? "So you don't know him?"
After his appearance on The Bachelor, John Paul Merritt returned to OKC and leveraged some of his celebrity to get involved with a trendy new restaurant in town called Cafe Nova. Shortly after it's opening, Diane calls and, again without saying hello, asks "Bill have you been to Cafe Nova? They have valet parking." Ahem......
Finally there were the gifts. After we got married, for every occasion, birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc. Diane brought gifts. She bought off our wedding registry for two years, then moved on to other, less useful items. I mean, what 40 year old man doesn't want pirate wind chimes? Or, reflecting my love of football, of course I needed the set of four cake spreaders with little black football players forming the handles. And just so I wouldn't lose track of the set, it also came with a base that looked like half of a football with slots to store the spreaders, and the word "Football" on the front. Regardless, we appreciated that she always thought of us...
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