Hazel worked for Mecklenburg County back when I covered county government for The Charlotte News. I liked her. She was a good at her job and she happened to be a good source, too.
Sometimes I would go by her office just to visit and sometimes she would talk about her ex, a hard drinker who had walked out, or maybe he had staggered out, of her life and left her with young children to raise alone.
He was, by all her accounts, worthless.
And then he conked. I was reading the obituaries in the paper, I have no idea why, and there it was, his obituary. I thought to myself, well, this will be a red letter day for Hazel.
I made it a point to go by my friend’s office to, I don’t know, celebrate? But, thank goodness, I played it straight. I didn’t walk in grinning, I walked in with a straight face and I said, “Hazel, I saw in the paper where your husband died.”
“Thank you, Pat,” she said, sadly. “He wasn’t perfect, but he was a good man.”
Will wonders never cease. My friend was grieving.
Coming Friday: It Was ME