As I sit down to have my Christmas cup of tea, I will be thinking of my best buddy Zandra and wondering how she’s doing on her next adventure. That’s what she called departing this world. She said it like she was leaving on a luxury cruise. Her relentless upbeat stance on life, and death, makes it impossible for me to feel sad even as I am missing her.

Before she left on her adventure, BB gifted me with her China tea cups and told me to think about her when I use them. But last year I was wondering if I was going to have any tea to fill the cups.

When supermarkets were having long product delivery delays, I wrote a column about my concern over not being able to get my favorite tea. I panicked when I found the store shelves empty of my Twinings English Breakfast tea.

“Maybe you have some in the back?” I asked the store manager.

“Sorry, ma’am, the tea you want is on a ship in the Long Beach Harbor.”

Other markets had similar stories, but no Twinings. Was I going to have to rent a dinghy to go out to the ship and bring it home myself? I pictured myself sitting on Santa‘s lap and crying through my mask that the tea is all I wanted for Christmas.

It turned out that Santa had a close connection to one of my readers. A few days before the big day, a large box arrived on my front porch. Other than the Amazon smile symbol there was no identification of the sender. Inside were five boxes of 100-count Twinings tea, per box.

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“Oh my goodness, “I exclaimed to Lark kitty. “There’s enough tea here to last me until next Christmas. And indeed it did. There’s plenty to take me clear through to the new year.

But the sender remained a mystery. That evening I received a text from Reader Suzy telling me to forget the dinghy and enjoy the tea. Suzy, as it happens, is one of BB’s lovely daughters. She has a heart like her mother’s.

And that brings me to the best gift of all that my best buddy left me…her family.

Email Patricia Bunin at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at PatriciaBunin.