Variations on Death - 2. The Widow

When I first met the widow, she regarded me with the deepest suspicion, as she did all new people, and spoke to me sharply on occasion, but I perceived she was kind at heart and only protecting herself. I studied her boundaries and observed them scrupulously and upon encountering new ones, marked them and did not transgress. For this, she rewarded me with a certain regard, because I had exceeded her initial low expectations. Out of her shell did I draw her, even out of her house and onto the street for long walks. To her cousin's houses she took me one day, showing me off to her relations as though to say, "You see, I am not a recluse, but have this young fellow as a friend." Pride swelled in me to be considered her friend.

She lived in a secluded country cottage accessible from my university. She offered to prepare lunch for me each day. She was an excellent cook, and I was no fool. I arrived promptly at noon each day. The same routine we followed for months as I studied medicine. I would arrive with pastries, cupcakes or cookies, while she prepared the main course. We ate together, and then she went quietly about her business, attending to her various clients around the world, while I studied my textbooks, because my professors tested us every week. Sometimes, we sat in her garden together, with just the sound of the breeze drifting through the dense woods bordering her property, and on occasion, talked.

She was reserved and quiet, with a poker face that could deceive almost anyone except for me. She had had a long, productive life working in the background to get important things done, unnoticed but effective. Sometimes one must go unnoticed in order to be effective. I tried to draw her out with my banter about my schoolwork, fellow students, or professors, or sometimes politics or culture, because I liked to learn her opinions and insights. She had made up her own mind about things. She knew I was gay, because she had met me through my partner. She told me she supported gay marriage without any reservations whatsoever, even though she was a Republican at a time when many Republican politicians spoke against gay marriage. She said they would come around eventually, because it was common sense. She also agreed with me when I argued in favor of the legalization of marijuana, because she had tried it long ago and knew it was not the great boogieman the government pretended it was. One of my regrets is that I never got high with her. I wish I had broached the subject, but I saw the many liquor bottles in her cabinet and concluded she knew her own preferences well enough.

One day, as I sat in her pleasant garden, I discussed an unpleasant subject that I had read about in my textbook, cancer, which fascinated me so, the cells of the body turned against the owner, rapidly dividing anarchy, collective madness among the cells. I discussed the ways the body fought cancer and the ways cancer gradually overcame the body's defenses. Her face assumed the stony expression I was so familiar with. She looked not at me, but at one of her plants. She was a consummate professional. Any other person might have thought her disinterested, bored with my science. I almost did, except for the buzzing of my antennae, telling me I had brushed a nerve, that there was some secret she was concealing. She changed the subject, and I let the matter drop, because I sensed she was uneasy with it. I should have pursued my hunch with tyrannical obsessiveness.

A year later, I attended her funeral as she was buried. Then I wished I had twigged her secret and ratted her out to her cousins, who would have made her see the doctor. She concealed her secret from me only because she knew my well-wishing heart and did not want me to meddle. She wanted to die, after all, and her will was strong enough to defy her friends, all of us do-gooders that would have interfered, thinking we were doing the right thing. We were all of us outwitted. She was done with living and had decided to leave the earth on her own terms. She felt ready, as most people never will be. I understand her and do not feel she did anything wrong, but even so, I miss her, oh I miss her dearly.