Maria who lives upstairs

No matter how much I beat the door, there is no answer. I'm about to leave and I hear the sound of slippers pulling.

Through the open door I can see a sewing machine with Maria all her life. As she says, a sewing machine over 100 years performs much better than her just over 90 years old. She complains about whether she is showing off the sewing machine or lamenting her old age.

Maria and I always talk almost the same. She confuses the past, the present and the future. The past becomes the present and the present becomes the future in the end, the bitter conversation of death continues.

She left Santiago, a rural Austrian city, to come to the United States by boat to escape hunger after World War I. Her husband, Tony, worked to repair the ship at the dockyard. Maria worked at a sewing factory on 28th Street in Manhattan.

She worked hard to save money only by the thought of returning to her hometown. When the money was collected, she visited her hometown, but her mother had already passed away. A few years later, she visited again, but his father passed away too. Brothers, relatives and friends have passed away one by one. At the end, they could not return to their homes where knowing no one.

When the couple was young, they used to go Coney Island every summer. Tony went into the sea and spent the summer picking up jewelry left by vacationers such as necklaces and rings for his wife. One day, a thief broke into the apartment and stole all the jewelry they had collected for decades, told me a story about there was a sad feeling that one part of the couple's memories was missing rather than feeling sorry for the value of the item.

In the cold winter, she spent countless days sitting by the window where she could see the Empire State Building in the distance. "In 1930, New York's appearance changed little from what it is now, but I was the only one who had aged. Empire State Building will be alive even if I die," she said.

I heard the sound of a plane in the distance. Looking at the flight away, she said that “it took me14 days to come to the U.S. but I can go to my hometown in eight hours now a day. I'm sure I'll go home soon." with a blush on her face.

Maria, who wants to return to her hometown, will someday go to her husband, Tony. Our lives come in precious, small and fragrant chunks and go to heavy and cold deaths. And then it will be more restful than ever before.

Maria wakes up in the morning and passing by her husband Tony's bed, she said, "Get up. Tony." She must have forgotten the death of her husband, who died a year a half ago.