The Widow

A couple of years ago when I first moved out of my mother's house, I was moving my things to my apartment slowly, like a couple of things a day until I had moved all the big stuff like bed, study, couch and I was left with the little things like books etc. I decided to get a couple of days off to take the rest of my stuff so one morning, as I was packing the last of my things, I decided to take a break and smoke one last cigarette on my parents' porch. I sat on the chair with my legs between my arms and I was smoking and watching the street.

As I was about to put off my cigarette, I saw our neighbour, an old lady who always wore black (tradition in Cyprus after someone's husband dies) coming from her back yard towards the front door, I tried to wave at her because I hadn't seen her in a long time but she never turned her head up to see me, so I thought, oh well, I'll say hello another time and I went inside to carry on with my business.

That afternoon, my mother and I were having our usual coffee and I told her that I'd seen our neighbour earlier that day, she asked me which neighbour I was talking about, and I explain that it was the one who lives across the street from us, that widow! She started looking at me in a weird way, so I said "what"? She asks me if I was sure and I said "yeah 100% why?"

She told me that she had died weeks ago! So it couldn't be that I saw her... I swore to her and I asked her why she hadn't told me that the neighbour had died when she died, she said that she thought she had told me... And we weren't that close with her so maybe it slipped her mind. The good thing is that she believed me, but that was the only time I saw her.

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