Billboards all around say San Francisco is a city of characters. So it is no wonder I met her here too. In her colorful kaftans, and beads and quirky glasses she looked like a quintessential San Franciscan "character". I was smitten. I also like to romanticize all things old school and her typewriter sound from the window across was no exception. I had seen her quite a few times already in the elevator with those brilliant, wise, well-traveled eyes while she dragged her grocery cart. Old-age did not seem to have caught up with her eyes yet. We met in the laundry-room and I pretended to be AY. No one was supposed to know I lived there too. She was cheerful and very inclined to talk and while I usually am a little wary of strangers coming and talking to me (Yes, it happens a lot. And I, more often than not, end up being an agony aunt. I think I am way too shy for it still), I was very eager to listen this time. So out came the story of a woman who had lived in the same apartment for 35 years yet had traveled across all continents. A freelance writer with a noisy typewriter, she was. And then the conversation started to include me. "Are you married?". No, I said. "Ah, I never married. My man lived a couple of blocks down. We were together for 25 years." (My thoughts then : "Dude, that is brilliant. Who does that? To be with someone for so long without the entire marriage tie-up. So, you actually WANTED to be with him?") "Then?"-I asked. "Then. Then, he got Alzheimer's. I brought him here. He died 2 years ago. He did not remember me by the end. He did not even remember himself." I was surely not expecting this between the tales of travels to mythical lands. I was shocked. Then I wanted to kick myself. ("How? How the hell did this happen again? I have enough woes in my own life right now") But, she seemed unfazed relating it all. She, in fact, appeared very happy talking about him, seemingly still in love with him, the good times and probably even the bad ones. I pushed the buttons on the washer and climbed six flights of stairs in a daze, still pretending to be someone else on a weekday holiday doing my laundry.
I cried intermittently the entire day. Not because I was sad for her. Not because I was sad for her man. I seldom cry when I am sad. I am yet to cry for S, though the nightmares of taking that last breath under water still haunt me after four years. I cried in despair, envious of her luxury of the last moments spent with him. She foresaw and she was prepared.
How blessed are those who know what their last moments together would be? You mostly do not even get to know till it is all over and look back to find only a void in your own memory. How would you ever cherish it then? All the time we spend blaming moments of weakness, other people, distance, differences in culture/religion/age, in lieu of that, we are scared to admit that we were just not strong enough to fight hard for it, that we made a conscious choice to let go, that we judged it less important than other things on our own. So why make excuses then? Why not? Even something as great as death does that. It makes excuses of disease, accidents, willingness to take your own life. But then, how many times do you meet someone you actually like (in my case, even bear) and more so want to spend your life with? To let go and not own up for such extraneous banalities that pretty much everyone in the world has exhausted over and over again is plain cowardice. Intrinsic nuances, for the sake of it, are at least more interesting reasons for relationship deaths. "She is a bitch. He is a bitch" seems like a relatively better argument. After all how can you be yourself if you are constantly scared of a negative reaction? Incompatibility of temperaments, lack of love, disdainful cursing provide for some valid causes of these lamentations and definitely make up more occupying stories. Yep. Till, obviously, you do not interrupt me during my cigarette break and start talking to me about it.
