There’s a lady that leaves on my street.
She’s in her sixties, possibly seventies. Her husband passed away five years ago. He was her best friend. She misses him terribly still. Her sister passed a few months ago after a swift fight with cancer. She misses her too.
There’s a lady that lives on my street.
She doesn’t drive, and her grown daughters and their families live a couple of hours away from her. She is lonely. So lonely she told a semi stranger like me that she was.
There’s a lady that lives on my street.
She must have been just like me once. A house full of little people and little people mess and cuddles and chaos. A husband she loved who comes home every night to help with piling little ones into bed, and listened to her unpack her day and ease into her evening. To do lists that took on lives of their own, meal upon meal to prepare, dishes to clear, tidying and more tidying and cooking and cleaning. Kissing and loving and serving and doing. Her hands must have been full of good things, just like mine are right now. But now when she closes her front door to the world, she’s alone. And that must be so difficult.
There’s a lady that lives on my street.
We had lived here for two whole years before I noticed her, or spoke to her about life and loneliness and families and being far away from loved ones. That’s sad, even by London standards.
There’s a lady that lives on my street.
Speaking to her today really moved and challenged me. It’s so easy to get so wrapped up in my right now, bogged down in the bullet points that I tell myself I must do each day to keep things ticking along. It’s so easy to forget that these moments are fleeting. And that full hands can easily find themselves empty again. I’m reminded yet again to focus on and be fully present in my right now, and to stop wishing away the harder seasons in the hope that “it will be easier when…”
There’s a lady. That lives on MY street.
What am I going to do about it?