We had the loveliest time with Carol Gulley Wednesday night, it was just a few days since Ed’s funeral, we thought it might be good for Carol to get out and have dinner with some friends, all of them women, as it happened.

Maria was there, of course, and so were our friends Liz Haggerty and Susan Popper. Both of these women have been through transformative experiences and are intuitive and thoughtful. I’ve noticed that Carol is very much at ease with women, she talks to them easily and openly.

I think she tends to withdraw  around strong and loud men.

My own instinct – I was cook and dishwasher – was to stay in the  background. Women are natural healers, in many cases. The chemistry was very strong. Carol and I are close friends, but sometimes I think I am one of those men to her.

And  I want to be honest, as much as Carol loved him, Ed was not the easiest husband in the world.

He tended to fill all of the spaces he was in, he quite naturally took center stage, was opinionated and often impatient with the opinions of others. I think Carol quite often deferred to him and slipped into the background quite instinctively. She  calls him My Farmer in her blog, never  Ed.

I loved Ed too, but I don’t want to deify him. He was very human. He could be overpowering. He and I were two blowhards together, I could blow back.

I thought Carol needed a quiet night. We talked very little of Ed’s illness and the funeral. I don’t want to share the details of our talking.

So I cooked a dinner of scallops, fresh corn, tomatoes with mozzarella cheese and fresh melon, all from the Moses Farm, the descendants of Grandma herself.

The evening was lovely, from beginning to end. I came and went, and finally disappeared to do the dishes. The conversation flowed easily and comfortably, it sounded lovely from the kitchen, like one of the beautiful running streams.

I think these women all took their cues from Carol without discussing it. They just knew to do it.

Carol didn’t say much at first. Her eyes were puffy and full of sorrow.

But then, as the evening wore on and she began to feel more at ease. She opened up and told us some of the very beautiful and touching stories of her life, about her horse Blackjack, her beloved father, early life on Bejosh Farm with Ed.

Sometimes she needed to be quiet, sometimes she needed to talk.

We all let her decide.

Carol is very proud of her blog, the popular Bejosh Farm Journal,  and I ought to say, she was the engine of that blog and of it’s growth, the woman that is always behind the great man.

She had a great subject in Ed and Bejosh Farm, but she has the pride and  ego of the natural bloggers, she always knows how many hits and visits the blog gets. She is proud of it, I can tell, and she will continue publishing it. It will be worth following.

Carol was shattered by Ed’s death, but she is also strong and resilient. As often happens, his illness transformed her, she had little choice. This is a process, and she is in it.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve witnessed Carol’s compassion, her devotion to family, her love of Ed,  and now I am witnessing something else, an emergence. I felt last night I was talking to Carol in a very different way than I  have talked with  her. I felt the beginnings of a different Carol.

I knew Carol, we were friends, but this is a different Carol. There is no shadow over her, no towering presence to support and to get out of the way of, or argue with. She will get used to that.

It was just a lovely evening. We could see Carol relax and open up as the night went on.

Maria and I were thinking how well these women did with each other, how at ease they all were with her (Maria too, of course).

She told all kinds of stories of the County Fair, just getting underway (she gave us all tickets, Ed was a big cheese at the fair.) She asked us to make sure to find the grandkids, they are staying in campers and 4-H dormitories to be near their cows.

I want to see the Ed Gulley memorial display his daughter Maggie put up, and i want to see my portrait of photos of him hanging on the exhibit. There are rumors of Thai food at the fair this year, that would be an earthquake.

At dinner, what I was thinking once again was that women are different from men, many are natural and instinctive healers. They understand one another better than most men understand them. The Goddesses seem to reside in many women, they pop up when needed, especially if they are needed by other women.

The evening could have been painful and awkward, but it wasn’t, it was safe and warm and healing, in the way women sometimes are and men rarely are.

I think these women will be getting together often. I felt friendships taking hold.  I think it was so good for Carol to come out to have dinner with  us, I wasn’t sure she could.

We sat and ate and talked for several hours (I was in the kitchen the last hour) and it felt like such a good place to be.  Carol came to life. It was light when they came and pitch black when they got up to leave.

I hadn’t planned to write about it, I didn’t take any photos, but afterwards, I realized I had to write about it.

Tonight, Carol took an important step away from the abyss, she stepped out into the light. Her life had just been shattered, the pieces were beginning to fall into place. Grieving is like that.

I wished peace for Ed, and I wish it for Carol, she knows what’s ahead. And she runs from nothing.