clutched

I was at her house, visiting.
She is tiny and fragile and she shuffles. She is the oldest person I know. And I don’t speak her language.

As I was leaving, we wandered through her lovely garden, which until recently, was gently tended by her first.born.son. But he is gone, and she is broken hearted.

The flowers are beautiful, I said [almost to myself]. She touched my arm, holding me back and shuffled off, returning with scissors. Her rusty hands gathered a small handful, pulled together with a wilted stem. And then she presented them to me, peering softly up.
[The best moment of my day].

At the end of last year I started to get that nagging feeling, that uncomfortable sense that you’re not living up to your own expectations, that you’re not being the person you’re meant to be. Somehow, something had crept in. At first I thought it was anger or meanness. But it wasn’t either of those things. It was just a not.kindness. An abscence of.

Then, yesterday, a beautiful reminder in the shape of a ninety-three year old with a clutch of front.garden.flowers and a palpable grief: there’s always room for kindness.