Camelia

Her name was Camelia. It was such an old fashioned Southern name that fit her perfectly. For most of her adult life, she had taught music at a local school but after her husband passed away, she abruptly quit her job and began teaching piano to students in her home."It's not because of the students," she once told me. "It's the paperwork and the lack of support from the administration. I"m sixty and just can't see myself hanging on there even another week."And why should she? She and her husband had worked hard and invested well. Finances were not a worry for her.So five days a week, young boys and girls filed in and out of her front door with sheet music stuck under their arms. Music, it seemed, became the backdrop of our neighborhood. At any given time, Mozart or Ravel could be heard wafting over the backyard fences.When my wife was at home dying of cancer, she always wanted her window opened just a crack just so she could hear the melodies (no matter how badly they were sometimes performed.)She kaçak iddaa died in April at the age of twenty-nine. Camelia brought a pan of chicken spaghetti over after the funeral. She sat on the sofa and cried - partly for my loss and partly for her own. Then, she went home to her empty house and I remained home alone in mine.For the months that followed, I threw myself into my work - often not arriving home until late at night. Before going to bed, I would have a single glass of wine while standing on the back deck looking up at the stars and licking the wounds of loneliness. More times than not,*Camelia would be sitting on her deck as well with her hands folded in her lap listening to the comforting sounds of nature.She was still a striking woman in my opinion. Gray, shoulder-length hair and hardly a wrinkle on her face with the exception of some crow's feet which actually accentuated her sparkling blue eyes in a positive way. Of course, being the academic that she was, fashionable, black kaçak bahis horn-rimmed glasses were almost always perched half-way on her nose. Her figure was (for a woman her age) slightly "padded" as one might expect but her extra weight was well distributed mostly to her breasts, hips, and bottom.On those occasions when our lives passed in the night, we always acknowledged each other's presence. I, with a gentlemanly lift of my wine glass and she with a genteel lowering of her head. But we rarely if ever spoke. Each of us was living in our own world*of being the "surviving spouse."One particular Fall evening, however, as I was sipping my wine, I looked over, and there she was, as predictable as ever. I raised my glass as always but this time she did something unexpected. She lifted her own wine glass in the air and then turned it upside down to show that it was empty.I laughed - at first not immediately taking the hint. Then it struck me. She was inviting me over, or was she? I really was illegal bahis not sure. I watched as she got up and went indoors. I stood there for a moment and wondered what I should do.* 'I'd better just finish my wine and go to bed,'*I said to myself. 'But what if she is over there - waiting for me - expecting me to bring her a glass of wine?'*I thought.Against my better judgment, I went inside, grabbed the bottle of wine, and made my way out the front door. Within less than a minute I was standing outside her house in the light of her front porch. Just as I was about to ring the doorbell, the door opened."Just what I needed!" She said greeting me with a kiss on the cheek."Yes, I brought wine," I said showing her the bottle."That is NOT*what I need, Grant." she replied taking the bottle from my hand and setting it on the foyer table.*"I need to remember that I am alive," she added as she moved closer and buried her face against my chest.We were very different people and I was a man half her age. Yet, none of that mattered at that moment. We both were crippled from the same deep loss and we both needed to feel the closeness of human touch again. She was right. I needed to feel alive again as well.