The Kindness of Strangers.

She is a stranger, and yet I know that we would talk for hours. Like old friends, we would laugh at memories and strike with whispered lashings at the vultures circling. And as the months passed and our minds cleared, we would wander unguided through the place were widows are left to wither and decay.  

But it is not about me. And it is not about her.

Her pain is no worse, and no less, than mine. Like those of us who have passed before—and those yet to pass—it is simply hers. My tears run hot for a little girl who does not remember the laughter and the warmth. Hers burn viciously for a little girl who will never be held at all. She mourns dreams never realized. I pick up the pieces of a life half lived. She is just beginning. I am beginning to live.  

Like parched leaves that swirl and rest and swirl again, I piece together the moments and the hours. Time that stood still before vanishing into the silent movie that replays in my memory. Help offered and unexpected kindnesses given. Cards filled with handwritten words awash in dried teardrops. Questions without answers. Blue shirts. Black boots. Polished brass.

A cream envelope.

He knew my husband by profession first. By mutual friendships, characteristics and moral compass second. While I mourned a husband taken without warning, she mourned a husband slipping away. And together they looked beyond their own pain to mine, giving me the gift of hope, compassion and peace of mind asking nothing in return and yet deserving so much more than I could give. Until I wrote the letters of her name on an envelope, like they had written mine only a few months earlier.

It is often said that those who receive the least, give back the most. Like the envelope that was filled with so much more than it held.

I do not know the woman behind the name on the creamy envelope in front of me. I write the letters of her name slowly, as though with each letter the pipes that played for her became less melancholy and more hopeful. And I wonder if someday she will wonder about the woman behind another name.

On another cream envelope.