I don’t know how you died, but you did, because when I last looked you were gone.
The windows of your house were shut and the red and white curtain that usually fluttered wasn’t there. I waited for a few minutes. Perhaps, you were in the shower or maybe you overslept. I soon realized that it wasn’t true. In the 2 years that I have walked by and waved you at you, there wasn’t a single day when your window was shut.

The first few times when we hesitantly nodded at each other, I wondered what you thought of me. I wondered how, of all the people passing by, it was you and I who noticed each other.

You, with your wrinkled hands clutching the window sill, raised one hand in acknowledgment after a few days. I remember the day clearly. I remember waving at you, wondering, creating several possible scenarios in my head about your life. Maybe you lived with your ailing wife, who slept the whole day. I wondered, if you lived alone, your children living in a different country. Children, who remembered you only on birthdays and festivals or maybe children who you Skyped with everyday, telling them about your day in halting but clear sentences.

That was my only form of interaction with you. Everyday, at nine, when I left for work, I’d walk past your building and you’d be there, waiting to wave at your friend. Day after day, we’d wave and smile, without bothering to take it further. I didn’t know your name and I don’t think you’d care for mine. We preferred it that way.

There was a certain simplistic charm to what we shared. It wasn’t complicated with the banality of the  details of our lives and who hurt us and who let us down.

I knew you were gone; I could tell the minute your window was shut this morning. I tried to ask your neighbours about you, for the first time ever. A few shrugged and said the ambulance came late at night and took you.

I didn’t press for details; did any relative come or did you lie alone? And if you did, was that how you wanted it?

I felt strange; not grief just the feeling of something amiss. I am not sure what I would have done differently had I known you were dying.

Then it came to me. You didn’t want things to be different. You didn’t want me to come over and offer you soup. Perhaps the morning of the day you died, you waved at me, shut the window and drifted off into a deep sleep. I know that maybe things went differently; but this is how I’ll choose to believe it happened. It seems only fitting.