She hardly looks up as she walks.
But she’s not unfriendly; she sneaks glances at the cars when they pass by, and when people wave to her, her small frame seems to grow almost two inches as she waves back.
Her little, yippy dog, Nahum, a white and brown terrier-of-some-sort, wears a cream-colored winter sweater this time of year, that she knitted herself. His name means comfort, and he’s almost like a mini-human, who has to be walked at certain intervals and fed some food-like substance that could make anyone gag.
But she loves him. He is the ground wire to her life now.
Her life used to be something so different. Then two years, three days and seven hours ago, her husband died from a heart attack. A cardiac arrest, the technician told her.
Those words replayed over and over in her mind, even after this long. It was so impersonal.
Heart attack wasn’t much better. But at least there was something more human about it, something that had some heart in it. She knew that was cheesy, but she didn’t care.
He had been her life, and she had no idea what to do after he was gone.
She was supposed to go first. That was their agreement. Or at least their secondary one. Their first was that that they would go together, so neither one would be forced to live without the other. They had absolutely agreed that she would not be the one left – without him.
But he had left her.
And she was alone.
All she had was their dog for comfort. Or something that slightly resembled comfort, at least in the daylight.
She walked Nahum around the neighborhood every day, taking the same route she used to walk – with him.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now. Or what she could do, even.
What she did know was that he had left her waiting. For him. For her life, or some version of it. For some way to make sense of the world.
Some way to figure out how to rely on God, a God who would do something like this to him. And to her.
*Fiction