Leaves and Threads

When we moved to our house in berkeley, california, back in 2019, we inherited neighbors, a couple in their 80's, Susan and Alan. As soon as we arrived, Alan waited for us in the small path connecting their house and ours to greet us. We met Susan a few days later. She was already in the advanced stages of dementia.

During the early days of the pandemic, when we were all scared and confused, the kids painted pictures, wrote messages, and stuck them on the window in our kitchen, facing Susan and Alan's kitchen window.

A few weeks after Susan passed away, Alan texted us, saying he was organizing Susan's stuff for donation and offered for me to come and see if there was anything I wanted to take. I went with Arbel. She took a pouch filled with sparkling birthday ribbons, and I took a box full of threads.

A few months after her death, Alan invited us to a small and lovely memorial gathering in the botanical gardens. We watched the slideshow and heard about Susan as a girl, a sister, a mother. Her daughters and sisters told stories about the nature lover she was, about the time she adopted a crow, her love for cats, her love for plants, and her volunteering in the botanical gardens.

And that's when the thread connecting Susan and me was revealed to mE.