The telephone book

is falling to pieces.
No, not the one they reluctantly supply with the print which is too small to read but our personal book.
The Senior Cat needs this book. It contains the names and phone numbers of people we might need to contact, the names he needs if I happen to be out and cannot look up a number for him.
There have been a number of these books over the years. They have all been ordinary index books. 
My mother wrote them and updated them religiously. After her death it was not done nearly as often. The Senior Cat sees it as being his job - but one he will put off as long as possible. He hates writing anything down.
This time I offered, "I can type a list..."
    "No, I have to do it myself."
Well, I thought, it will give him something to do when it is too cold/ too hot or too something to be outside. He still avoided the task right through the winter. Our winters are mild, very mild compared with those in Upover. He did feel the cold but it was not enough to suggest that it would be better to fill a new phone book with numbers.
I thought about this, left the problem for a bit and then, when the back cover as well as the front cover fell off I mentioned it again.
     "Good idea. I'll start today."
He went as far as finding the new index book we had bought about eighteen months ago. The old one sat there.
I know what the problem is. He, absolutely rightly, is finding it hard to face that many of the names in the book are no longer relevant. People have left us. People who were once his friends have died. 
The Senior Cat won't be able to go outside for some days. The temperatures here are rising over 40'C. I am doing my best to keep some of the garden alive.
But inside I did something else. I said,
    "Why don't you bring the old phone book out here while I get lunch? You can read the names out and we can decide which ones we need to keep."
And that is what we did. We did a little reminiscing as we did it. It was a positive cooperative exercise instead of a sad, solitary one. 
But it made me wonder how much we all procrastinate because of we have lost not just family but the other people who make our lives relevant?