We went to hear the St Michael Trio perform at Stanford tonight.
Always a good time. Always a lot of old friends to run into who go, too.
We were talking to some of them when a very short elderly woman intervened, wanting our attention as if she knew us. Oh okay. The concert had ended and there were a lot of people talking in the foyer at once; the sound now was an impossible cacophony of joy.
Richard was paying attention, but more and more she focused on me as a sympathetic soul as she told her tale I couldn’t hear. I finally realized she was talking about the death of –somebody, through a major medical error–I caught the bit about the needle through the windpipe as Richard winced.
All of it said perfectly straightforwardly, even cheerfully, glad to share the news with old friends who would want to know. Richard told me later she was talking about her mother–who would have had to have been well into her hundreds if the story were new.
We had not the slightest clue who she was.
And then her middle-aged what I took to be her son found her and anxiously pulled her away from us, sorry to have bothered us.
No, no, really, I found myself wanting to tell him as they disappeared quickly into the night; I’m glad we were able to be an audience when she needed one for a few minutes and I’m glad she got to put on her best and have her hair done and go out and enjoy a good concert. I hope someday when I’m old and perhaps bonkers someone is patient enough to listen to me, too. To be with me.