Get that Olive!

Send it this way! 

For a salad lacking too much nutritional value, an Olive Garden salad is pretty yummy. I like everything in it except for too much dressing, those pepper things, and black olives.  

Of course, being such a perfect pair, Roger balanced that out. He could live without the lettuce, though he would eat it. He loved the onions, pepper things, and above all, the black olives.  It is a good thing we typically had more than one salad at our table on Sunday afternoons. It was also a really nice thing that most of us did not care for black olives.

It made Roger's day to get the black olive! I never saw anyone so excited over one of those things! It still makes me laugh. Typically I could dish out salads for both of us and never let one of the things touch my bowl. I had this ability to fish it out and get it on his plate before it could ever even touch mine. Why, yesterday, I even thought I still had the talent, because I fished around that pepper thing and left it in the big bowl.

But what do you know...at the end of my bowl, there it was, staring up at me, a black olive!  How did it slip in? It reminded me that Roger was there with us at lunch. He is not forgotten. We still have laughter and we still make plans...he would want it that way. 

That crazy little olive reminded me of Roger's Lesson.  Keep living.  Live well and laugh a lot while you are here, and do something really worthwhile with your time. The time for rest is later and eternity is a long long time.  I know it will be grand and I know he is enjoying it quite well.  But he is still very much missed. 

I guess that every time I see a black olive, I will just laugh and remember that he would want me to live well and invest in worthwhile endeavors. Friends are sooooooo worthwhile.  I am glad we have friends who laugh! And I am really glad that some of them will take care of the black olives!