We are mystified as to where she has gone. Perhaps he’s killed her, he says and I laugh knowing he is joking but still discomforted, as he is, by the change brought about her son’s death. Someone is down there. Or at least they are on and off. Lights are on in the kitchen sometimes and I’m sure that it was there smoke alarm that was screaming at 8.30 am yesterday. But her window isn’t open and she always sleeps with it slightly ajar. It isn’t our business but you can’t help but notice and be involved, however much at a distance, with the lives and cares of one’s near neighbours. Her other sons take care of her clearly, but how can she possibly remain here alone at the age of 103? (Or is it 104?) Another smoke alarm went off in the afternoon. Is everyone burning toast?
She told me her father was an arc welder. I love such details, they immediately form stories in my mind. She was telling me that he is now virtually blind and dementing. Bless him. All that life shrunk to nothing. Or is it? Perhaps there is still a wealth of knowing behind the forgetting. I hope so. I watch her as she works on me. I close my eyes but I am still acutely aware of her as she lays crystals on my head, my stomach, my chest, my groin and my neck. I sink into the couch and if it wasn’t for the desperate need to empty my bladder I would have fallen in the deepest, kindest of sleeps. She carries so much but is still such a generous healer, keeping her hand on my leg right to the very end.
Thank you.
