Is it me or is it her?

A new friend on facebook just started a chat with me to invite me to a Scandinavian festival in a city two hours from where I live. I was surprised because she lives in Denmark, so I asked if she was visiting here. No, but she knew people who were going and would love to go herself.

She knows my husband died only five days ago and thinks it would cheer me up.

What??? Driving two hours to a city I tend to steer clear of, to mix with a whole lot of strangers from Scandinavia? My only link to Scandinavia is that Princess Mary of Denmark and I were born on the same island ... at different ends of it and many decades apart. But Scandinavia's not the point. The idea that I'd want to seek out strangers from anywhere at this time, and join them in festivities, is what rocks me.

She says her husband died in 2003 so she 'knows'. I really don't think she does. She's a much younger woman than me, so presumably her husband was too. I don't know how he died, but can imagine she might well have been in intense grief and needed conviviality to take her mind off it. Me, I've never been a party girl at the best of times.

It's nice to be comforted by old and dear friends; it's also nice to spend some time alone with me. I am certainly not hankering for the kind of cheering up she had in mind.

And I'm nearly 73, and Andrew was 83. I miss him for sure — but not so often as you might think, because he is so present anyway. My grieving is mostly in remembering how difficult and limited life had become for him in recent months. In truth I am incredibly glad that he is now free.

I don't think he's at peace; he was that in the days before he went, I'm glad to say. I think he is having a ball now, flying free with renewed vitality, able to go wherever he likes. People all over the place are reporting seeing, feeling or hearing him.

But this facebook friend.... She is a very new one. She put in a request, and sent me a message saying how nice it was for her, as a writer, to meet me who published a magazine. I don't. I replied to say she was mistaken.

I didn't accept the request because I have a ridiculous number of fb friends already and feel I neglect many of them. I seldom accept new requests from people I don't know. A couple of days later I got a long, hurt message about the fact that I clearly didn't want her frendship, saying I was obviously not like other Aussies she knew who were so welcoming and positive. I replied, apologising for hurting her feelings and explaining my position, also that I was very occupied with my husband's ill-health at the time. She wrote back apologising in turn, and telling me a bit about herself, and on impulse I said that after so much communication, we'd better be friends after all, if she could put up with some neglect. And there it rested until this bizarre suggestion today.

I'm sure she's a nice person with kind intentions, but we don't seem to be on the same wavelength. The trouble is, she's in a writers' group I'm also in on fb, so I don't want to unfriend her now. I've turned off chat instead.