text: &#x200B; In the early hour, the frost is still thriving in the shadows of the trees, hidden from the dawn, in the vacant park. The bench gradually grows warmer from my weight upon it in the brisk Autumn morning. No voices, no obtrusive sounds penetrate my ears. Only the sound of distant traffic, and the occasional flutter of wings. For the first time in a long while, I get to sit and embrace the silence without worrying about work and responsibilities. It’s been two months. I sit and try and remember every feature of her face. Every curve, every dimple, every blemish. She always told me not to frown too much, or my face would wrinkle before I was even thirty-five. She was seventy-eight and still so full of life. When I first met her in Maple Leaf Retirement Home, I thought we would never get along. Being hired immediately after graduation, I was excited to finally move onto real life- no more classes and reports. I could finally help keep the elderly healthy, it’s what I had wanted to do since I was a child. That was until June 6th, 2014; the day I met her. Beverly Jane Edith Williams was a dainty seventy-five year old with dyed red hair and thin eyebrows that always seemed to be drawn on in a scowl. She only liked to eat green foods on Thursday’s, and meat on Saturday’s. No food could be touching and forks had to be three pronged. Long crew neck t-shirts must have had one sleeve folded across the top and one underneath the bottom. So precise that Beverly Jane was. Widowed, but no next of kin, no relatives currently living. Her lonesome life was all laid out in front of me in her file. She would have killed me if she knew I read through it. “That’s an invasion of privacy,” she’d say, “You’re probably some Russian spy our government doesn’t know about. Those politicians are some lazy bastards, I tell ya.” Corrupted by her own insecurities, she pushed everyone away in an attempt to keep herself safe. She shared her secrets with me one day when I shared mine. It had been my first midnight shift, which was stressful enough, and my long-term boyfriend had dumped me for my best friend. “Two birds with one stone.” I had asked what she had meant by that. “You’ll have people come into your life and make it seem like they are going to be there for the rest of time. They’ll take and take all they can, until you have nothing left to give. Then when they realize they have no more use for you, they leave. You’re better off without both the lover and best friend in the end. They were never real, they never cared. Instead of finding one out now and another later, you got them both out of them way right off the bat.” &#x200B; “I guess you speak from experience.” “Now listen here, dear. You may’ve just shared something personal with me, but it’s not like I wanted you to. You should expect nothing from me in return.” Her soft advice was now replaced with a stern order. “Now get out of my room and wipe those tears. I can’t stand to see them slide down your face any longer.” As I had been drying my face and reapplying makeup, another nurse had knocked on the bathroom door. “Emily, the patient in room 237 has requested you visit her immediately.” I had re entered her room with a fake smile plastered onto my face. “Did you need something, Ms. Williams? I was told you called for me.” “Yes, I did.” Silence. “Ms. Williams?” “Just call me Beverly. And get over here and sit your ass down.” “What is it?” “Just don’t speak. Let me talk.” I signaled for her to continue along. “My daddy left for the Korean War when I was nine years old in ‘50. I had an older sister, Meredith, and a pet dog, Rufus. After he left, Mama told us that we might not see him again, that something might happen and we would lose our Papa. Only nine years old, I refused to believe I could live without my hero, my first love, my father. She paused, reminiscing in only what I could guess were memories of her dad. I knew she was finally opening up to me, so I sat and waited for a few minutes for her to start again. “You know, I can’t believe I’m actually saying any of this to you. I ain’t ever told anybody about my childhood.” Another pause. “Meredith had lost her right leg, and eventually her life from Polio in ‘53, only a year after the news of my father’s death had reached home. Rufus ran away, probably with some bitch he found in the neighborhood, when I was fourteen. Get it, cause female dogs are called bitches? She let out a soft chuckle, and I couldn’t help but grin. After another moment of her collecting her thoughts, she resumed. When I was sixteen, mom started to have strange men over at the house every night. I’d hear her sobs through the walls after they left each morning. It soon seemed like there was never a moment she was sober, so I left. I got on a train and headed to Chicago, in hopes of finding work, but unexpectedly, I found love instead. My sweet Richard Wayne. He worked as a mailman for the small town I had moved to, and I’ve never seen a man look so sexy in a uniform.” She gave me a sly wink. “Oh you should’ve seen him, Emily. I don’t think anyone else could have been in love like I was. And believe it or not, I was the one that made the first move. After meeting his lovely mother and sister, he had proposed to me May 5th, 1961, the night the first American man landed on the moon. We wed September 13th the same year and life was perfect. We moved in together, and each got a job at the local university, Rich being a janitor and me a secretary. 1964 rolled along and Richard had decided to enlist for the army to fight in the Vietnam War. With much hesitation from me, I had finally agreed to support him. I kissed him on the doorstep of our house, and that was the last time I really saw my husband. He returned in ‘68, but he wasn’t the same. Only now do I know he had PTSD. He was there, but the spark behind his eyes and the genuinity behind his voice was gone, he was monotonous. We still loved each other until death did us part in 2012, when he died of a heart attack in the middle of the night. After I had no one else, I decided I didn’t want to be alone and I came here, to Maple Leaf.” After laying everything out there in front of each other, exposing our weak spots, we both gained more respect for one another. We became each other’s best friends. I helped her get around when she couldn’t walk, she comforted me when I had no one else to turn to. We stayed up through the nights just talking and sharing jokes. We calmed each other down when her roommate, Diane, stole her last piece of cornbread, or when my co worker, Janice, filed the wrong charts and blamed me for it. We threw our own 2016 New Years party in room 237, drinking sparkling grape juice and eating cheese cubes. As the ball dropped and the shouting of numbers began, I felt a smooth hand clasp around mine, and as I looked over to her face, silhouetted by the light of the TV, she only wore a content smile as she kept her eyes focused ahead, and in that moment, I never felt like I had left home for college, or work. I didn’t feel like I had no one left to care about me, I no longer felt like I was alone. She had become my home in only three years time. Whenever I was with her was when I was most comfortable living in this boring, lonely life. But she started to get sick. Fluid filled her lungs and it was no longer green foods on Thursday’s, and meat on Saturday’s. It became pleurodesis\* on Monday’s and 100 mg of Furosemide\*\*. No more smooth laughs, only wheezing breaths. Just like her husband returning from war, she was never the same. September 13th, 2017, what would have been her and Richard’s 56th year anniversary, was the last time Beverly Jane Edith Williams took an agonizing breath. I thought I could move on, that I could just find another patient to connect with, but everyone had a part of them that reminded me of her. So as I sit on this park bench, in the middle of November, not caring that I had quit my job not even 24 hours prior, I reach up to my face and smooth it out. “You’re going to get wrinkles if you keep frowning like that.” Well, Bev, I can’t seem to do much else these days. # \*Pleurodesis- Operation in removing fluid from the lungs by draining it. \*\*Furosemide- medication used in treating Pleural Effusion (Fluid buildup on the lungs.