I used to call her Martha

I noticed something a little off kilter two days ago when I overheard a cellular conversation.

I’d never seen him before, so I watched from my living room window as he walked along the sidewalk across the street with his phone pressed against his ear.

The loud words were garbled but as he spoke them, a shiver ran through me. She must be dead, I thought to myself.

Then yesterday, as I was watering the front yard, I noticed two strange vehicles parked along the side of her house and I thought about the pleasant conversation Marge and I had only just a few weeks ago. She came over while I was in the yard, and I listened as she highlighted her life on this street for the last sixty-two years. And while she was pointing out this house and that house, giving me the run-down on the families that used to live there, she suddenly became a young woman again. Her stories were funny and she made me laugh.

George told Ron and Keith, yesterday afternoon, that Marge is holding on by a thread, having suffered several brain aneurysms and an Intervention that took part of her skull. That her children, who are both in their sixties, are tending to her house while on death-watch.

As I look across the street, at the potted geraniums on her front porch and the American flag flapping in the breeze near her front door, I remember the day she came over and, out of no where, put a smile on my lips.

Good day Ms. Marge. Good day.