Like many women in this world today, Mary Jenkins was a lonely widow. She had been married to Harry for forty years. Harry had been a long distance truck driver for twenty-five years and was usually gone from home three days a week. Three years ago after he retired from work. He started having chest pains one afternoon. He suffered a heart attack and died before an emergency rescue unit could reach him.
It really came as a shock to Mary because Harry wasn't sick very often; he wasn't a smoker and seldom drank any alcoholic beverages. He was always a picture of good health and had taken a physical two months before he retired. The doctors told him he was in as good a shape as most men twenty years his junior.
Mary had grown accustomed to Harry being gone three days a week for twenty-five years of their married life. Now she had just gotten use to him being there all the time since his retirement. It had been a good marriage, but now he was gone and she was really alone for the first time in her life. The fact she didn't have any children to turn to only gave cause for the increase in her loneliness now. There wasn't a lot of money left over from Harry's insurance policy after the cost of the funeral, burial plot etc.
Mary couldn't afford to travel. She was on a fixed income. It was just plain boring sitting around the house all day. She was fed up with all the violence on the news and junk programs offered on television. Reality TV had become disgusting. She desperately sought ways to combat the loneliness that was now robbing her of the few years she had left.
One day while visiting a close friend, who was also a widow, she was introduced to chat rooms on the Internet. Until then Mary had never even heard of chat rooms and didn't know what they were. Her friend explained to her how she had discovered the computer world of chatting. It was a great comfort to her and she would be miserable without her chat room friends who she talked to everyday.
"I talk all over the world and meet lots of great people just like us. It is so exciting. It's almost like having a family again and in a way these people are part of my family now. Most of us never give our real names in chat. We use nicknames we make up ourselves. My nickname is Flower Power," her friend enthusiastically told her.
A few days later Mary bought a computer. Flower Power helped her get connected and introduced her to the fascinating world of chat. Mary chose the nickname Stardust. Henceforth I will refer to Mary Jenkins as Stardust.