The guy who lives two doors up the road from me died on Tuesday. My mum had told me the day before that he had very suddenly been diagnosed with lung cancer and admitted to hospital - I think this was over the weekend- and he died very swiftly. I didn't know him all that well but he and his wife were already living there when we moved in here 18 years ago. He used to give me lifts up and down to town whenever he saw me walking was was fairly frequently and when I worked in the local pub where he was a regular he always stopped to chat and bought me a coke or an orange juice.
He wasn't young - I had presumed he was round about 70 but my mum said he was 79. He was also, iirc, a rather heavy smoker so I guess he is lucky that he reached the age he did - lots of smokers don't. I know that everybody dies and that if we pass our three score years and ten in comfortable fashion then we're lucky but still, I was very saddened - he was a nice person. And I really feel for his wife who has suddenly been left alone for the first time in I don't know how many years. How do you move on, how to you get on with your life, when the person that you shared it with and that was presumably the central part of it is gone?
Anyway I've been thinking about her a lot the last few days. It seemed wrong somehow that I was having a good time with Antti when she was mourning the loss of the life she had known and contemplating a future alone :(.
(I seem to be logged in as me again.. I've given up trying to guess why).
