An 89-year-old man at the retirement home got down on one knee and asked me to marry him — I thought it was a joke until he explained why he had chosen me.
I started volunteering at Fallowmere House four months after my husband died.
Everybody assumed I was there to help other people reconnect with the world, and that was partly true. I wanted to be useful again. I wanted to sit with people who needed somebody to listen.
But if I am honest, I was the one who needed somebody to talk to. The quiet waiting for me at home had got past the point I could manage.
And that is where I met Alby.
Eighty-nine, sharp as anything, and able to get a laugh out of a room that had not laughed all week. Every Wednesday we had tea and played chess and he told me about a
