Another piece of History gone

This morning at 6.30am,yet another little piece of street history was put to rest.For thirty odd years on and off she was there right as rain.As children we avoided her,as an adult back on the same street many years later with her still there as my neighbour,i smiled at her,gave her a cutting of my plants once in a while but was never sure if she recognised the child she once knew.I obviously underestimated her memory.She identified me the moment I was back on the street.
Today four years after being back,four years of watching familiar people disappear,their once lovey,tranquil home being torn down to give way to flats.,I saw yet another familiar face disappear.For the first time in four years I visited her home to pay my last respects,shed some tears for a woman who was so much part of my world but quiet distant form it.Was I mourning my own loss of a few months ago,was I mourning the fact that my wonderful green neighbourhood would now disappear,was I mourning because the time has come for me to attend more funerals than ever before,was I mourning my own mortality....I don't know but this sense of sadness descends on me.I watch as they take her body away and I realise quiet suddenly that I was mourning for a spirit that I grudgingly admired.I marvelled at her will to survive,at her constant glee at being the only surviving member of her generation on the street.I willed her to walk and stand after she came back from the hospital,because I didn't want to see a spirit die.But like all else she also had to go,ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
They washed out the house as a final statement and I my heart goes out to her son.For some sixty odd years he has been with her,his life so much a part of hers.I don't know him at all,I would have nothing to say to him but for him its a lonely road ahead.An empty house that will be fought over by greedy relatives and siblings.Host of relatives who descended on the house....people who never once bothered to visit her while she was ill.Then I notice that the woman who actually fed her,sat with her and saw her through her difficult times...was not there.She didn't belong and despite the old lady being with her till the end,custom decrees that the one woman who was always there was not part of all the final rites.Religion and caste drives a wedge there,it was more important than human kindness,it was far more important than anything else so the old lady went alone to her grave and we watch in sadness as curtains come down on an era.