for the past 3 days after breakfast...

... I go in for my hourly check to find her sitting in the living room. In the corner, by the door her handbag is stuffed with her essentials. On the floor next to it a wooden hand carved Madonna ... something that I had won on a dare in my teen years. She is waiting for the "transport" to take her to the "new place"... this elusive property that someone has supposedly bought for her. Of course, the transport never comes and after I serve her lunch she goes into her room to lie down. I know the memory of today will slip away in her sleep and she will be waiting again tomorrow.

In variants of this living fable that she is living out, I have already moved to this new place... even though I prepare her meals for her every day. In another she wants me to visit her when she is moved so that she will know how I am doing.

Last night as I sat outside enjoying the breeze and skinning a mango, I wondered where this obsession to move came from. Then it struck me. I recalled an on and off topic of discussion between her and my father when I was younger. We lived in class 4 government quarters even though Dad was entitled to better living accomodation. That's where it must have begun. Maybe promises were made... though I don't recall any being made. Perhaps that's where I learned to make few promises... and to keep the ones I did make.

The irony is that he did provide the opportunity to move. His pension after his death when I was 12, provided the capital to buy a new house. One that she owned outright... one that she sold years later to buy this one when she moved out here. Perhaps in her mind "moving to a new place" never really happened... perhaps the yearning has resurfaced once more because it wasn't something they did together... that even though she has owned her own home it still didn't count without him.

Perhaps it is something I just want to believe just so it makes some sense to me... simply a way to continue coping.