Portraits etched in memory

“Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami

“You know you fit in here so perfectly, I feel as if you lived here all your life”, says my 82 yr old very posh, very genteel, very English neighbor, suddenly, in the midst of a session where I am showing her how to Skype so we can stay in touch. 

“Ha ha ha”; my very loud, very inelegant and very un-British guffaw, comes out almost instantaneously even before I can stop it, ruining the heart felt emotion behind that touching compliment. 

“Do you remember how we met? I never thought we would ever become friends after what happened that day” I say. As far as first impressions go, the one I made the day we first met, still makes me cringe with embarrassment. 

We had just moved into our new home in London and the first thing I found on the steps was this beautiful bouquet of peonies and lilies with our address on it. The first thought that I had was “Wow, the real estate agents here sure know how to welcome people”. I happily took the flowers inside and as I put them in a vase, a little card fell out. Opening it, I discovered to my utter horror that they were addressed to a neighbour and were delivered by mistake to our address. Mortified, I took the flowers and walked to her gate and knocked a few times. It was locked and I couldn’t see beyond the large wooden gate. It was raining and I didn’t want to leave the flowers on the pavement either. Thinking the Universe probably meant for me to have the flowers, I brought them back in. 

The next morning, there was a knock on my door. Opening it, I found an elderly lady standing there. “Hello, I am your neighbor, Chris” she said. The first thought that sprang to my guilty mind was “Oh my God, she knows I took the flowers and now she has come to yell at me”. But Chris had only come to say Hello and to welcome me to the neighborhood. 

“There is something I need to tell you” I finally blurted out the minute she sat down. I went on to confess about the flowers, all the while wondering what on earth would she be thinking about me. But the very ‘propah’ lady I met remained nonplussed, requested me to write down our names on a piece of paper so she could remember them and then as she left with the flowers, she asked me to come over the next day to have a cup of tea. 

I went there with a bouquet of flowers (a new one) and told her they were to make up for the ones I had taken. She started laughing. And thus began our odd friendship; between two people as disparate as could be; one a very proper, genteel, posh British lady and and a very brash, inelegant Indian less than half her age. 

“She is merely being polite. Brits like to mind their own business and stay aloof” my hubby said. But he was wrong. Proper and correct at all points of time she may be, but aloof or stiff upper lip she most definitely is not! 

She took me around in her car to show me the nearest Waitrose and M&S and the other shops in the area. She introduced me to the butcher and the florist; and gave me a first hand orientation to all things British – from getting fresh eggs from the butcher, cucumbers from Kent and ham from Wiltshire and bread from Warburtons and fish from the fish lady who drove by on Tuesdays to introducing me to her bridge buddies, her book club and even to the social do’s and don’ts and the unsaid, unwritten dress code at the Ascot. If I had to thank one single person who made my transition in to this completely new country, an easier, smoother one, it would be she. 

But that is not what I will miss the most about my octogenarian friend. 

I will miss watching the Ascot on her little kitchen TV and laughing while we discussed the fashion choices everyone flaunted! I will miss the little flowers and cards she left me as a surprise, made all the more special because of the effort it took to write them,, with her arthritis. I will miss her calling me to check up how I was doing each time Vj travelled. I will miss her assuring me that she is just a phone call away each time I want help or need a ride to the market. I will miss her patiently going through and complimenting every frivolous post I wrote and every picture I shared with her. I will miss her doting on my boys, showering them with gifts from candies, to soft toys to books specially printed for them for Christmas. 

But most importantly I will miss the company of a woman I have come to respect and admire so much over these past few months; a woman who changed my whole outlook as to what life at eighty could be all about. 

I will miss the gutsy and fiercely independent woman who drives her car around because she cannot walk to the market any longer; who lives alone and yet asks me to call her if I am scared of being alone when Vj is travelling; who makes fun of her own lack of mobility; who hates talking about her ailments and who never asks for help if she can help it but has always been  there to offer me all the help in the world – from driving me to the sorting office to offering to get me groceries so I can come back from my holidays and not have to go to a shop immediately. 

I will miss a woman who taught herself to use computers at the age of 75; who discovered the advantage of Kindle long before I did (did you know Kindle is a god send gadget especially when you have arthritis and cannot hold a book for long?); and who pooh-poohed my fear of online transactions and promptly proceeded to teach me how to shop on Amazon. 

And I will miss the woman whose engagement diary is always full, whose social life makes me, a woman less than half her age and in the prime of her life (me in case you wondered who I am talking about) wonder what the hell am I doing with my life! 

I get up finally and promise her she won’t get rid of me so easily and I will hound her with emails and phone calls. And knowing me, she definitely will not. It will not be the same as living next door to each other, but it will have to do, for now. 

And as I bid goodbye to the one person I shall miss terribly, I hope and pray that if I can reach even half her courage, her independence and her generosity of spirit, I will consider my life well lived. 

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How can a 'Goodbye to London' post not touch upon the one man who mattered to me more than anyone else here!
Yes, that's right, talking about the butcher here! :)

The day John returned from his week long annual holiday, I was there first thing in the morning, at his shop to greet him with a "Oh my goodness, you will not believe how much I missed you". And I don't think I have ever been that effusive with the husband in the 12yrs we have been married.

Actually I was aiming for a more sedate, "How was your vacation and I ran out of meat" but having suffered through a weekend of trying to cook and bite into  leather like meat from the desi butcher, one cannot fault me for letting my carnivorous emotions getting the better of me.

A lesser man would have wondered if I was making a pass at him, but not John. The thing about him, the reason we got along so well as a perfect match of mental wavelengths. With a grin that lit up his dour face, he asked, "Why where have you been buying your meat from while I was away?"

He knew that if I bought steaks, it meant the hubby was away and would relentlessly tease me with "Are you sure he doesn't have a jolly tucked away somewhere?"
He knew my love for haggis and introduced me to the tradition of Scotch and haggis on Burn's night.
He gave me tips on cooking my steak and keeping it juicy.
He assuaged my worries about V2 eating only meat and V1 eating only fruits with a pragmatic, "Think about it, between the two, they do manage a balanced meal, don't they?"
He knew of my penchant of attracting bad weather on holidays and would greet me a sympathetic "oh you poor sausage" (butcher speak for the more common "my love" used by everyone else) each time I came back from a trip.

I am going to miss all that.
But most of all,  I am going to terribly miss the most amazing home-made sausages I have ever eaten in my life. The first time I bought them, John announced proudly, "after you taste this, you will never want to go back to store bought trash in your life".
And he was right.
Everything else will now seem like store bought trash! And for a carnivore like me, there can be no greater tragedy.