Trace of time

She stepped out the door, her back reminding me of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame.I said “Hi” to greet her, but she didn’t answer. She covered her left eye with one hand and quickly turned her head to the right, then lowered it again. Her stiff face looked like it was sneering, but I couldn’t tell if she looked at me or just stared at the wall. Without saying a word, she pushed the heavy door and walked out.

She was British. Once a month, always on the first day, around 3 p.m., she visited our building. Even though she didn’t live here anymore, she came to pay rent for the apartment she had lived in when she was young. She didn’t want to lose her lease. She would stay for an hour or two in the apartment, even though it had no electricity, and then disappear quickly.

She said her son, who was in jail, sometimes came to see her. He would cause trouble, harass her, and then go back to jail again. To avoid him, she lived in hiding somewhere. She worked as a live-in housekeeper for someone even older than her, but no one knew exactly where.

One day, a social worker came to check on her apartment.

“She’s too old and sick to keep working as a housekeeper. She needs to come back and rest,” the worker said.

Many social workers visited and started preparing for her to return. But she never came back. Later, we heard she had died.

Her apartment, now empty, was opened. Furniture was carried out.

Surprisingly, they were all expensive and beautiful pieces. It seemed she had bought them one by one, working as a housekeeper, hoping to return someday and spend her old age in comfort. But she was gone.

Now only the furniture remained—waiting quietly in the dark apartment for a new owner.

I also know a Mexican neighbor I met at the local swimming pool. She owns an old three-story wooden building in a good location. She used to rent a unit there, and when the elderly landlord got too old to manage it, he offered to sell it to her. She hesitated because the building was so old. An inspector told her, “Don’t worry. You’ll die before the building does—just buy it.” So she did.

The things we love and take care of for years will someday belong to someone else. We are only temporary caretakers, keeping them safe for the next owner. Death comes closer each day, but we live as if we’ll live forever—clinging to our possessions, trying so hard to hold on. I don’t know why we do that.