Her Mother Calls Her Carol

Every Thursday, Diane walks from Longwood Drive to King Street West to visit with her mother. Margaret has endured sixty-two years of living as a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. Twenty-five of those years she has spent dying.
When the air is crisp and the sidewalks are damp, Diane brings her mother a batch of homemade chicken soup. Without her teeth, Margaret can’t eat much else.
When the air is warm and the sidewalks are dry, Diane prepares a lunch of mashed potatoes and vanilla pudding for an afternoon picnic in Gore Park. A flask of sherry and a menthol cigarette sooth the despair in her mother’s eyes. Mother and daughter sit and observe the pigeons scrounging for crumbs. They speak very little, but when they do, Margaret never questions why God blesses some, and tests the faith of others. Margaret’s life wasn’t always this way. She married young, bore two children, and created a family. She baked cookies, played bingo at St. Joseph’s Hall on Friday nights, and loved to dance.
At night, before it is time for her to leave, Diane makes sure her mother is tucked in with her sister’s old quilt, a Bible, and a large plastic liner for protection from the rain. Margaret would never leave her place on King Street to live with her daughter. This is her home.
“’night, Mom. See you next week.”
“Thanks for comin’, Carol. Kiss Tom and the boys for me. Tell ‘em Grandma loves them.”
On her way home, Diane stops by the cemetery. She stands in front of the granite stone marking her sister’s grave. It has been seventeen years since Carol died. Tom has remarried; Jake and Simon are grown. Everyone else has moved on, but Margaret never could.
The pedestrians on King Street West walk right past Margaret. Some will pause to drop a coin in her Tim Hortons’ cup and whisper, “God Bless You,” and she’ll answer, He always has.