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.
I hope so.
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