During an August that has as much war anxiety as 1939-hope clings on like a last breath of life.
The old lady who lives upstairs from me died last week. She's been my neighbour for the 14 years I've been here. I never knew her last name because she kept to herself.
I know she didn't care much for Trump because she once said, "He's a real so and so." But she also didn't think much of new immigrants because once in the apartment's mail room, she said something untoward about "new arrivals."
Through gossip, from other, old women in the apartment, I learned she didn't have the easiest life. In a tabloid newspaper tone, they spoke of her late husband, who died from suicide long ago.
When they spoke of their recently departed neighbour their words were strands of pity, scorn and superiority sown into a fabric of sanctimony whose needlework had been taught to them long ago by their parents, peers, religion, and society. These old ladies won't be disrobed from this suit of smugness until death comes for them as it came for the elderly woman upstairs.
A few days ago, I ran into my deceased neighbour's daughter whilst walking. She told me her mother's death was not pleasant. But then again, she died from pulmonary fibrosis, and that killer is seldom kind to its victims.
It is more like a long lingering extinguishment from suffocation.
I have this same disease, and it has already killed my brother, my dad and his sister Alberta in the 1970s. Mine is in its early stages but considering the times we live in most likely there will be some other malady- or event, maybe political, maybe economic to see me off rather than pulmonary fibrosis.
Still, my dead neighbour fought her dying to her last breath no matter how miserable her final months of life had been; she wanted more of it. Hope, not hearing, is the last thing to go before death.
It took my Dad close to 15 hours from the moment the ICU nurses began the overdose of morphine before he clocked off. I was amazed at how deep he breathed through it all. He sounded like a marathon swimmer trying to break a record- crossing the English Channel.
When my old neighbour from upstairs was alive but progressively growing worse from her disease, I let her family borrow the transport wheelchair I still had from the time my dad was alive but in failing health.
To thank me, they asked if I wanted the contents of her freezer, which consisted of frozen meals from a company that promised memories of the good old days in every bite of their mass-produced dinners. I accepted them because we live during a cost-of-living crisis. It is foolish to look any gift horse in the mouth- especially if you are on the razor's edge of homelessness.
I took them and am glad I did because the month has been a calamity of expenses followed by the customary robbing of Peter to pay Paul. But as sustenance goes; they are loveless and taste of a loneliness similar to when you eat airline grub in the middle seat of the centre row of a charter flight to Newark, New Jersey.
I prefer to make my meals because despite poverty; I still cook appetising and nutritious food with what I have available. I buy meat near expiring, over-ripe fruit and vegetables that are reduced in price because they are as flaccid- as old men in need of Viagra.
Still, it makes for healthy, appetising eating and gives me the sense I am beating the system rather than it beating me. It's not poor choices that make the impoverished choose horrible diets, but the absence of money. People buy junk food because it is usually cheaper than fresh food. It gives people momentary food highs, making them forget the misery of their day-to-day grind.
I don't- or at least not often indulge in junk food because I am still dealing with the after-effects of cancer four years on. I also need to keep myself as healthy as possible for as long as possible. If I again become seriously ill, I don't think I will be able to get back up and on my feet. Like my old neighbour who died last week- each of us is gripping on to this world for dear life. We all are hoping that things can change for the better in our lives or at least return to when we were healthy.
I don't know if that will happen considering this August is the most nerve-wracking since the August of 1939.
We are all waiting for Netanyahu's war of annihilation to erupt across the Mideast and then go as far afield as our own neighbourhoods.
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