Danna Ogden

I just saw Mrs. Ogden as I did a quick errand to the corner store, she was walking down Grand Street. Thin as ever, tan as ever, her champaign grey hair in its straight bob, with her baseball cap on.

But her body was stiff, struggling as if she were having small fits and it was all she could do to keep walking.

But walking she was, with dignity and style, despite whatever was ailing her. I suspect it could have just been old age. She must be in her late 70s now.

She and her boyfriend bought my grandmother’s cottage decades ago and rehab’d it. Put a second addition, keeping the original of the cottage as the top floor.

I hated them after they bought. Never liked her in particular before. She was the mother of a girl and boys that I had grown up in the vicinity and they were a wealthy family and had regard in the community.

I never felt regarded.

It was a shock to have someone else owing my grandmother’s house. After a few years, I got over it, but it always felt awkward to have them there, though I did start sending them Christmas cards at some point in time. I think I thought of it as neighborhood outreach, and they would send me cards back as well.

She and her boyfriend now actually live in a condo across the way from my apartment, though it is rare that I ever see them out. Perhaps that is because it is rare that I am ever out.

She was a beautiful woman, still is, though the freeze of age seems well upon her.

It was a shock to see her so stiff and pained walking but determined to hide any discomfort.

I am sad today, it has been a sad weekend, filled with history in my head, and the what ifs and where did I go so wrong.

Afraid that my manner of being isn’t something I can shrug off now, nor do I necessarily want to.

This weekend though, I am lonely. It is rare I get lonely per se, though I am most often alone.

It is only with memories and worries that I get lonely. Imagining things that were and then were not, and not to be.

I spent 10 years of my life liberating a property so that it would have value and then I still got short-changed, hugely short-changed.

Never am I happy, and that I mostly don't care about, but oh, I hate it when I ache and the worries come up around me like a fast tide.

It hurt to see Mrs. Ogden today on the street, a reminder of how it is all so fragile, fast, and fleeting.

I didn’t want that reminder today, not from her.