The Blue and White Umbrella

They have been friends for so long, they're like an old married couple, except that there's a certain tension she feels when they're together which he doesn't feel. This is a major inequity between them as she sees things. She sees too many things.

At a terrible juncture in his life, he lost nearly everything solid; his home, his son to a different family, a lot of money, business, self-esteem, confidence, and whatever else could be lost by one person. There was finally nowhere to go.

Knowing that being under the same roof would kill them, she still told him to come share her nest. It was that or almost the street, and she couldn't bear it. Because that's what friends do for each other. They stick.

So he came with bag and baggage, and in the very beginning it was possible that it could work out without too much hell to pay. But the very beginning lasted a brief time, an almost instant spontaneous combustion of good manners and consideration took place.

She felt the nest to be under attack. She ousted the newfound enemy that lay beneath the surface of her friend, unseen for almost twenty years. It was hard to decide which was worse, to finally know him too well, or to realize she had been friends with a stranger for so long. She gave it deep thought. And concluded little.

As the warm months slid by in too much rain and disappointment, her friend came to his conclusion though. It was time to move, and so he told her he was going somewhere worse. He was running blind.

On a storm beaten day, with rains threatening flash flooding, and enough dreary sky to reflect sadness that might have slept through it otherwise, he came to see her, and to collect some belongings he'd left with her.

He went back and forth, filling the car in the down pouring of sky water, carrying a big blue and white umbrella, his feet squishing in the saturated earth. When the work was done, they sat together in the kitchen, talking as though it was any day, in any week, in any month, in any year of their long time. They were so casual, a stranger would immediately know something was wrong if he happened upon them. They acted the way people do at funerals sometimes, as though burying a beloved were something they did every day.

He rose to leave. They said casual good-byes...see you later, drive carefully.... At the door though, when he was half out and still half in, he stopped, put himself in reverse, and stood before her, bent to her and embraced her. She kissed his neck and smelled his cologne, one of her favorites. He half laughed, and remarked on it, then drew himself upright. She saw his eyes with threatening tears, the whites reddened and saying so much.

Then he turned, and once again the casual good-byes....

She watched the top of his umbrella passing the small kitchen window, then, looking through the exposed full-length window of the front room, she saw the umbrella still moving along, this time in full view, completely hiding him as though he were already gone, and she wondered if she would ever see him again, or would her final memory of him be the blue and white stripes disappearing around the corner.

She was composed as she sat there, but soon enough the distress signal reached the heart, and she wanted to fall on her knees, rend her garments, throw ashes on her head, and wail in great lamentation.

Love knows no boundaries. It does not carry a card of identity that tells you, this love is for children, and this love is for marriage, and this one is for your parents, and this for friends. It is simply love, and it can break any heart in the world.