Thought in the car on my commute to school

I didn't get to blog last night. I did go to work and was there here until after 5:00. It's 7:00 in the morning and I'm back for more. I will be here until at least 4:30 tonight again. Not bad for a regular job but they say that I'm allowed to leave at 3:05 everyday because that's when I'm paid until but then they call mandatory meetings without compensation. When they do give us anything it's in the form of Comp time. Which means that you can leave early. Only we can not use it when the children are here so that means that we almost never have a chance to use it. I have over nine hours of Comp time from this school year.

Today I was thinking of the man that would fix our washer and dryers in Old City. He was an older guy that didn't get around very good. He was short and thick around the middle but really thick meant both overweight and muscular. His wife would call you in the morning and tell you what time he would be at your house that day. So instead of hearing sometime between 10am and 6 pm, you were told 10:30 meaning that he might be up to five minutes early or late depending on traffic.

He loved his wife and talked about her often as he fixed the appliances. We of course had the worst landlady in the world so we would see him at least once a year.

We saw him again when we moved to the two bedroom apartment just downstairs from the old one. The washer there was not turning. His wife didn't call that time but he did instead, giving us the time that he would be there. He didn't speak about his wife while he worked and actually had to leave before the job was finished. He told us that his wife was in the hospital and visiting hours were almost over, if he didn't leave now, he wouldn't get to see her. He seemed surprised and grateful when we told him that we would see him tomorrow instead of arguing that he had to stay because the appliance that was not yet fixed. He came back the next day and fixed it early in the morning without a problem.

It was almost a year and a half later that the washer broke again. In this time we now had the twins and life was busy for us. He called in the morning to set up our time and came promptly. He didn't seem his jolly self but was not grumpy either. He did his work and left.

I wanted to ask about his wife but wasn't brave enough. I knew that she was not able to call and set up the appointment and he didn't talk about her. I feared that she had died but was afraid to ask. I didn't want to bring up sad events that were not needed.

I often wonder about him and his wife. Had she in fact died? Was she recovering at home? Did he think that we didn't care enough to remember her? Did he even care?

I'll never know because I wasn't brave enough to say anything to him.

It's memories like this that haunt me. Decisions that I was never sure about that still plague me at odd times. I'll never have answers to them now and they would be best left alone.

I think now that I would ask him about her but it's easy to guess what you would do and impossible to know.

Her name was Elizabeth.