That one made me cry, too, Jeff. But I've told you that already.
Pen, I've seen a woman live out her life in loneliness after losing the love of her life (to divorce in this case) like your friend. She was my Mom. And she died alone and an alcoholic in her little apartment when she was 60.
As horrifyingly sad as her demise was, the rest of her life after my Dad was gone from it was not always unbearable. She sobered up for 12 years between when I was 13 and 25, and she and I had some truly wonderful times in those years. She was the best friend I ever had. We talked about so much and laughed so hard sometimes that I think we both felt like we could paw the white out of the moon, we'd had such a good time. But she never so much as dated another man again, let alone fell in love with one. She said no one could hold a candle to my father - that that was the way it always was and the way it always would be.
I like to think of Ennis finding a good measure of happiness with Alma, Jr., and then with her children, in that way. My Mom *adored* my oldest brother's two little girls. They were the lights of her life, and she babysat them all day when they were babies so my brother and his wife at the time could work. She loved it - it gave her no end of joy. But when he and his wife decided that she was going to quit working and stay home with them, and she told my Mom she didn't want her help anymore (they didn't get along - I think because she was jealous of how close she and and my brother and all of us were), she took to drinking again. She died two years after that.
I like the way you see it, Jeff - not of Ennis dying in utter despair like she did, but having come to, if not being fully healed from his loss, accepting it and being able to glean some happiness from what's left of his life. That was where my Mom was at when she was still caring for my nieces every day. I'd have much rather known she died in the midst of that bit of happiness than two years later and that much more miserable.
