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Thank you.

We had a fairly rich social life before she died, but many people just stopped keeping in touch.

Maybe they don't know what to say or feel uncomfortable around us now.

Oh that's got to hurt. It's kind of a double loss, you're more alone then you might otherwise have been. Again you have my better thoughts, all that is hard.

One of the only good memories from a particularly terrible job was them sending me a really nice flowering potted plant when my grandmother passed. It was extra thoughtful because it was low maintenance and hardy.

When my wife's mom passed, her grief was deep. And she didn't want her mother to be forgotten, so we planted this insane rose bush. It didn't look like much then, but it's hard to keep the thing under control now. And we think about it all the time, it suits her personality perfect.

As an aside, this is one of the reasons Jews place a small stone on a gravestone rather than flowers.