Fandango’s Dog Days of August #4-Lost Love
I used to catch a bus to work
around the corner from where I lived.
One Tuesdays and Wednesday Agatha was there, she’d bring her own simple canvas camping stool to sit on while she waited for the bus and sometimes she smoked and said nothing and sometimes she would tell me about her husband:
He drinks to much.
He smokes to much.
His health is bad.
He talks to much.
He could be wicked mean.
When she married him her family wrote her off and her son refuses to speak to her.
She didn’t seem to be terribly bothered by the fact her family wasn’t in her life.
He used to be good looking but now, Agatha said about her husband. He’s sort of desiccated looking and she wonders how much longer he can actually live for.
His liver and kidneys are bad and his lungs aren’t in good shape either.
Can’t be easy, she said, for his body and soul to keep together like that. Eventually she would mused the entire works was bound to break down.
She didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that her husband didn’t sound like he was longed for this world.
Once I said I was sorry for her troubles. It sounded like she had lost and was losing more then anyone should have to bear.
When the bus pulled up Agatha would toss her cigarette into the gutter, fold up her chair and said, before we got on the bus ” I think that when you lose something, it’s probably better if you don’t go looking for it. It’s like when an animal gets sick or hurt and wanders off and you go looking for it and when you find it, it practically rips your head off and then it kicks the bucket right there in front of you.
When something wants to be lost and die that bad. Let it, Agatha told me.
I see your point, I told her. I’ll keep it in mind.
Then we got on our bus and started our day.
You should have “lost” her stool and if she practices what she preaches, she won’t look for it. Problem solved.
She’s walked away from her family so I’m sure she wouldn’t care about her stool.
Oh is she one of those “toppers” who have to top everything one says?
Not at all. We didn’t always have a lot of time to chat. Sometimes we just talked about dogs or cooking.
My impression was she had lived a hard lifeelings and it made her a hard person.
Does she hear when someone else speaks to her
She does. You wouldn’t expect that.
Wow. 😕 (are we talking about a real or fictional person?)
All I changed was her name. Cold as she is, I find her fascinating.
It’s good that you take interest in the people around you and try to dig deeper. Me, I say the hell with them. 😉 Just kidding. Sort of. But I think that taking that interest in someone else is like a faucet of flowing water of new material. Otherwise, we’re sitting in our own dirty bathwater going over the same stuff over again.
I’m just rambling now.
You’re not rambling! It’s true, if you want to write about the human experience you have to experience humans!
Agatha seems like a un-empathetic and unsympathetic person. She is, perhaps, a bit too matter of fact about her apparently ailing husband. Seems like she lost whatever love she had for him a long time ago.
She did. She’s a hard woman, but how she got there does intrigue me.