She’s gone.
I didn’t know until her daughter and son in law knocked on the door. I invite them in. They’ve never been in my home before and sit uncomfortably on my settee making me embarrassed about its shabbiness.
My neighbour, a woman in her seventies, has been taken into a nursing home. They’re not certain that she’ll be able to come back home. She has a mysterious rash and terrible pain in her back. No one seems to know the cause.
I bubble, saying too much, saying too little, not knowing what to say.
It is only after they’ve gone that I realise that she probably will not return. It is only today that I realise that my neighbour’s daughter has already begun to reassess where her mother should be and that back home is probably out of the question.
The other daughter is taking the tortoise today. It was her childhood pet which she’s now going to reclaim.
The blinds are closed in the kitchen and bathroom windows. I used to look to see if they were open, felt oddly comforted when the lights were on.
I feel I haven’t done enough. I remember how when last cutting the grass my neighbour had stopped and then sat on the wall. Spotting this, I’d finished the job for her.
I’d planted pink geraniums in her garden, and I’d recently cut down her two nitida bushes. I’d given her some of my home made soup and shop bought bread to try. I’d looked after her tortoise. I’d given her hot buttered crumpets when she complained about hearing a didgeridoo that kept her awake at night. And I’d chat with her over the wall if ever the sun was out.
It seems like neglect on my part that I didn’t know about her most recent suffering, and that she’d gone away on Monday and I didn’t know until Friday.
The house next door now feels terribly empty.
I don’t think her daughters will let her return, for one is kindly, and the other a practical business woman; a deadly combination.
And now it seems that my neighbour’s life has been concertinaed into this single moment, as if a memory was all she ever was.
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