Friends Missing A Friend

I made a quick trip to Santa Fe to spend a few days with Mister D.  After I arrived, we had a leisurely lunch on the plaza followed by a little retail therapy.  Natalia came over for a glass of wine when we got back to the house.  We talked for a few hours often tearing up when remembering Mister P.  That evening, Cindi came over and cooked a delicious dinner featuring halibut caught on her cousin’s Alaskan fishing boat when she was part of an all-female crew last summer.  We spent hours after dinner sitting at the dining room table talking and reminiscing.  The next morning, D and I met Mister P’s ex-wife and her wife for breakfast at Counter Culture.  More conversation and reminiscing followed breakfast.  After breakfast, we picked up a few things needed for Mister P’s celebration of life before heading out to the wealth manager’s house in the desert.  She’s hired an LA interior designer to revamp her house and wanted our opinion on paint colors.  Her partner, the heiress, was printing photographs in town.  She was recently picked up by a gallery in New Hope, PA and had sold five photos.  The gallery was asking for additional stock given the popularity of her work.  Plans were made for the ladies to come over for salad and pizza that night.  Dinner was leisurely and once again followed by conversation and reminiscing. 

I drove home the next morning.  It was a warm sunny day.  The northeast New Mexican landscape was stunningly beautiful.  The newly paved highway dissected the parchment colored native high-plains desert grasses with strips of dark black.  Specks of dark green evergreens dotted the land.  The distant mountains were purple in hue beneath a cloudless light blue sky.  It was as if nature was comforting me after an emotional visit with friends missing a friend.