Maud.

Maud is a proud 87. She carries a stick, happy with the posh meal she has just had with her lifelong friend. They talk of emailing Harold when they both get in. Her friend, after aired and blown kisses and the lightest of touches of her arm, is off to his front door being carefully watched by Maud willing him this time not to trip again. On the way to Maud’s home, she tells of fields that used to be at the bottom of her rough crater laden unadopted road she has lived in for all of her life. When we stop at her house and she paid me plus a twenty pence tip, given to me in such a way that it felt an extra special twenty pence piece more than normal, she then told me of and pointed to a tree far in the distance on the ridge…

 On every midsummers night eve she has watched the sun fall onto and swallowed by the tree far away on the ridge and that it has grown big as she has withered and wizened with age. She watched this magical event with her mother as a child and then watched her grow old and remembers the last time her mother saw the tree swallow the sun. Maud tells me this may be the last time she will see it. She invited me to watch it with her. I declined, not wanting to invade this memory, but promised that I will take my grandchildren to see it. I watched her get in safely and knew that a little while later she will be back out sitting on her porch in her small front garden sipping a cup of tea enjoying the final midsummers eve sunset she will ever see. Maybe her mum will be holding her hand as they watch it together.