So it seems

So it seems there was this girl, not a goddess but not a floor mop either. She was, well she was, let’s just leave it at that. But the thing about her that made her special was just that very un-unique thing. She was like the rest of us, simply average, in her space and doing what she wanted. Don’t get me wrong, she had to work. I mean who doesn’t right? Every day she would take the subway from her house to the office where she worked. On the way to the subway she would walk the 12 or so blocks down a section of the city that was in and of itself an enigma. A small street off a busy confluance of traffic and people that seldom sees either. It is lined on both sides by mature maple trees. I’m talking 100 years if they are a day. This time of year the leaves where brilliant shades of yellow, gold and copper. The everyday reminders of a street that is but a shadow length away from the corner Starbucks is covered in those leaves.
It happened to be raining the day our young lady was walking through this particular part of the city, on her particular portion of route to the subway, leaves cascading down and covering the street and everything making her forget, if only for a few minutes that life is more than just paper cups and plastic bags. Life, if we look for it is there, always there. She bent down to pick up a leaf that had just fallen in front of her and as she did there was a loud bang, then the sound of shattered glass.
The morning was quite cool and on this particular morning our young lady was wearing a hat. A pink hat to be precise that was knitted by her mother years ago. It reminded her of a time long ago, a time when running through the leaves was the best feeling in the world. It made her sad to think…. She looked now at the hat as it lay on the ground at her feet where she was reaching for it and noticed a small red dot that had stained the bottom lip of the hat. As she stared at the dot, trying to figure out why it was there and why her hat was on the ground another red dot appeared on the pavement directly at her left foot, then another and another faster and faster like a leak on a faucet.
She looked up with her eyes to see people running out of the house across the street. She tried to stand up but something was keeping her from moving. There was a set of feet beside hers now. Then another pair, what funny shoes, she thought to herself.” They look like slippers but also like shoes….and just like that she puked on them. Down the persons leg, into the cuff of the shoe and over the front. She wanted to say sorry, “that isn’t like me, I don’t know why… then blackness.
There was no fear, there was no more time to reflect or take in the autumn colours or feel the rain on her face. No heat, no cold just a slow fade to nothing.
She closed her eyes and let the person take up her weight and lower her to the ground.  “Get a pillow” she heard someone say but that was the last thing she heard.
Just one of those things, however you want to rationalize it. In the wrong place and wrong time, her number was up, God called her home if you believe in that sort of thing. If she had forgotten something that made her be there at that precise time you might think something like that, on the other hand say she forgot something and it made her 5 min later… could that have meant someone else or no one at all. And you would say, wow were you ever lucky, if you hadn’t forgotton your .. whatever.. that could be you.
Her sister, my girlfriend at the time stood over the casket at the church and tried to rationalize it but there was just no way. What was there to say, what can you say to help someone that just lost a person they love.  After all these years, I still don’t know what to say, except you are missed.