She stood, at the doorway, in full deja vu.

Surveying the dog sheet curled over the pillows, the rumpled blue and brown fleece. The little bowls, on the dresser. The three, inverted, grey and white socks, on the floor just near the child’s rattan chair draped with those pewter hued gym pants which always fit her just when she needed them.

The hallway, dog bone chards embedding in the terry tufted rugs from Ollie’s. Stand alone heater, always almost enough to cut that blood clotting, bone deadening chill. The Young Chang, hopelessly out of tune, against the central wall.

She’d had that old workhorse for nearly thirty years. Almost feeling again the giddy suspension of all reason which had moved her to hire the guy to haul it all the way out to this living room, even her own piano had become part of the deep, inextricable familiarity of these surroundings.

Familiar meant comfortable. Comfortable meant secure. Secure meant the hope of enduring life. How does one turn away?

Little Fitz Willie the cat, silent. Imploring. Bella wriggling. Brody gazing. The birds.

She loved. Like the earth, under foot.

His grandfatherly, cumin scent. Stumbling to the kitchen, hair Kewpie coiffed, for the ground morning cup. Crouched, ready for the bathroom well before she would ever be. Grousing, endlessly, in glorious malcontentment, through an entire day and into the end of it.

This couldn’t be the end, of anything. She knew it all, too well.

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© 2/20/19    Ruth Ann Scanzillo.    Please respect the author’s story. Thank you.

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