>>Tamar advised me to set aside an hour a day to grieve for him. She has given me lots of good advice but I passed on that one. I am grieving for him plenty already without going out of my way to do so.
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>Actually that wasn't quite what I said. I mentioned that I'd found the Jewish tradition of going to a service to say the kaddish helpful, in that it gave me a place and time that I could focus on my grief. It made it easier to put it away at other times when I needed to get things done.
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>But fwiw, it's more than 2.5 years since my mother died, and I still often walk into the house, look at the answering machine, and expect to find a message from her.
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I just double checked the email and you're right, you did not come right out and suggest I do that. You described the tradition and left me to draw my own conclusions.

Everyone here already knows I think you're a saint. It can't hurt to say it again. You're a saint.

Tamar has contacted me every Tuesday for several years now to see how I am doing. Every Tuesday, even if she was out of the country or had relatives visiting. Now that is commitment. It's not some fly by night altruistic urge. It's in her core.

It's not cheer-you-up pablum, either. She tells me what she thinks I need to hear whether I like it or not. When I lie to her, which has become rare, she busts me every time. What are you going to do different? What are you going to do different? What are you going to do different? Like a broken record. Sometimes I just want the easy lies, everything is fine, and she won't have it. Now there is a true friend.

Here is a sign of how much I respect her. Last month, after I quit my most recent job, she steered some consulting work my way. It was an old client in the Chicago area and she didn't have time to do it. She said frankly that I am a little leery of doing this because my reputation is on the line. I called the guy up and we set up two days of analysis, nice rate, with possibly much more work after that. But I was not doing well and thought for several days about what she said about her reputation. I called the guy again and backed out, without reference to Tamar.

Thanks, Tamar. I have said it many times privately and now I am saying it publicly.