EDMOND — From year to year, the Oklahoma State Fair doesn’t change that much. The exhibits may change, there may be different events, and vendors may find new food to put on a stick, but the fair is always a constant.

Dorothy Barber, 72, knows the State Fair as well as any other Oklahoma City resident, having attended with her family for the past 18 years. Every year, the family travels to Oklahoma to spend the weekend together and visit the fair, spending eight hours a day there. But although the visit and the fair may be a constant for the family, many other things have changed this year.

On April 2, Barber moved out of her house in Mustang where she had lived for 33 years and into Touchmark at Coffee Creek, an assisted-living community in Edmond. Her move came five years after her husband, Charles, passed away.

“I had a large home, an acre of land, swimming pool, the whole bit,” Barber said. “I tried for five years to maintain that, and I finally decide life’s too short just to maintain your property.”

So this year, Barber began a new transition in life.

“You go through a lot of heartaches in giving up what you’ve known for 33 years, which is how long I lived where I lived, but you know this is just another phase of your life, that you’re moving onto something else, hopefully better,” Barber said.

She did much of the packing herself, which she described as hard work but not a hassle. She packed her own breakable items, letting the movers take care of only the large furniture and the boxes.

“Basically, it’s only a hassle if you want it to be a hassle,” Barber said. “My decision was in February and I moved the first of April. If you have a lot of special mementos and things like that, all you have to do is just decide what it is you have to take or need to take or want to take.”

The items Barber decided not to take were handed over to an estate manager, who took care of selling what she did not need to bring into her new, smaller apartment. Barber admitted, though, she wasn’t able to be there for the sale as people browsed through the items that had been a part of her life for so long.

“You don’t want to be there,” she said.

Barber still had to visit the house occasionally while it was for sale, but said the visits weren’t difficult.

“I don’t really think of it as my home anymore, because it’s just kind of an empty shell,” she said, looking around her new apartment. “This is just a mini-me now. I feel quite at home.”

Barber’s apartment may be smaller, but she said there also are a lot of advantages to her new home.

“The worst thing I hated all my life is the changing of the sheets and the pillowcases,” she said with a laugh, talking about the cleaning crew that takes care of her apartment for her now. “That’s wonderful, that you’re freed up to do just about anything you want.”

Other advantages are more personal. Although Barber left behind many of her clubs and activities in Mustang, she has made a new set of friends with her new neighbors. She said making new friends was easy for her.

“I happen to be outgoing,” she said. “It wasn’t hard for me to come in here, and actually, being the first one in here, it was even easier, because when people came in I met them one-on-one.”

The company is one large factor Barber considered in her move, who admitted to feeling lonely after her husband died despite the many activities she enjoyed.

“What you end up with is going home to a very large, empty house, where you have no one,” she said. “And I don’t care if you were busy every day in your life from morning until evening, you end up, at the end of the day, alone.”

Having company is a large reason Dorothy eats the majority of her meals at Touchmark, instead of eating out at restaurants more.

“What you’re doing, in essence, is eating alone. The food might be excellent, but you’re eating alone,” she said.

Meals at Touchmark are different, though. Residents tend to gather a little early for dinner, which begins at 5 p.m., and then don’t rush the meal.

“We don’t just eat and run,” she said. “We might sit there until 7 o’clock. It doesn’t make any difference how old you are when you get to sit down in conversation.”

Barber admits, however, that it’s after dinners when she starts feeling alone again.

“After dinner, like we used to say in Guthrie, they roll the streets up,” she said. “I walk Sadie (her dog) quite a bit, and it’s like I’m living in this big estate or castle or something and I’m the only one here. That’s a little disconcerting, because in a sense I’m still alone, yet I’m not alone.”

She said much of that may be because of the loss of her husband, whom she always had been accustomed to spending the evenings with.

“If Charles was here, I’d have him, and I wouldn’t be so focused on what everyone else is doing.”

For a person like Barber, however, staying active and involved will be a part of her life for as long as possible. She volunteers at a hospital once a week, and is active in her church.

One weekend a year, she still can gather with her family and visit the State Fair. Because while her and her family’s lives may change and move into new phases, it’s one constant she knows always will be there.