Sick and sad.

My poor hubby.  We suspect it was a mild case of food poisoning that made him sick at the bike races on Sunday.  So we had a quiet day yesterday with him having plain food such as toast and honey with cups of tea.  We had just finished dinner about 7 pm when the phone rang.  Ken answered it, and after a few words with the person on the other end, tears were running down his face.  His oldest and dearest friend had just passed away in hospital.

Ken met his mate (also named Ken!)  at school when they were about 10 years old.  They spent a lot of time together as teenagers, then Ken P got married and moved around Victoria with his wife and children over the next few years.  Ken kept in touch and visited them, but eventually they moved to Queensland to live, and only came back to Melbourne for occasional holidays.  We went up there, and Ken flew up to surprised Ken P on his 60th birthday. But they kept in touch by phone, cards, and in recent years by email as well.  They were more like brothers - Ken P had two sisters and my Ken has one sister, but the sisters were never friends, although of course they knew each other when they were kids.

Ken P. was an accident waiting to happen, all his life.  My Ken was always telling stories about the things they got up to, and the accidents that would occur to Ken P.  He lost the sight of one eye many years ago when he was stringing a barbed wire fence, and not wearing protective glasses.  As he got older, his health suffered major setbacks, with one leg amputated, and then things went from bad to worse.  But he was one of those blokes who just laughed it off.  Ken would ring him and say "How are you?"  and the answer would be "Oh I'm all right.  There's plenty of poor buggers out there who are a lot worse off than me!"  It was only because his wife Anne would tell Ken what was really going on that we knew how bad things were.

She called Ken on Good Friday to say that her Ken was in hospital and it was looking bad.  I said to Ken he should fly up there to see him, and he was thinking about doing it, then we got the phone call to say it was too late.  Apparently they have both willed their bodies to scientific research, so there won't be a funeral, but Ken P's daughter told us they would probably have a memorial service at some time in the future.  Ken has been looking up the flight times on his computer, but turned to me and said "I don't think I'll bother going up there now.  He's gone, and there is nothing I can do.  Their four (adult) children will look after Anne, so there's no point in me being there".

So it is a sad time for us right now.  Just as well the kitchen isn't going to be installed for a few weeks, as neither of us are feeling like dealing with that at the moment, but it is something to look forward to when we've worked through the grief of his loss.