Dinner for One: a New Twist

Unlike most Americans, I watched Dinner for One (and its parodies, especially Döner for One) every year with my German husband. This year he wasn't there, and I reinterpreted Miss Sophie, the nonagenarian with the imaginary friends, whose butler manfully assumes both their four different accents and personalities as well as the considerable quantities of alcohol each gentleman supposedly consumes. Heroically, he's prepared to undergo horizontal gymnastics with the energetic Miss Sophie, winking at the audience as he leads her up the staircase and utters the famous question: "Same procedure as last year?" In her dignified way, she remonstrates, "Same procedure as every year, James," and she's clearly looking forward to a good time, even as the audience hopes James won't be incapacitated by the vast quantifies of booze he's drunk. 
This year I thought about Miss Sophie outliving all her boyfriends. But she does just what any bereaved woman naturally does--I've been doing a great deal of this myself--she talks to the dear departed (even gets her butler to talk to them!) I talk to photos of my husband, I talk to him when I feel the urge as I'm cooking or when I wake up or when I'm taking a walk. I still feel mildly surprised that he doesn't answer, but my one-sided conversation reminds me of how nice it felt when he was listening, smiling, answering, asking questions of his own. To have outlived four serious boyfriends and still get a bang, so to speak, out of the butler bespeaks a certain fortitude, a heroism, a feminist triumph even. Miss Sophie was never crushed by grief--one feels that in her quiet comments on the soup and her decisiveness about the wine. She's a woman who has learned to live with sadness and make the most of what she has. My Southern father used to say, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," but what else has Miss Sophie done with James?
And finally Netflix has its own version of this gem. I with I'd bought myself one of those "Dinner for One" coffee mugs I saw on the way home today . . . I can just see pouring myself a little red wine in one of those while watching this: