I was sitting on my front steps reading ... It seems the only thing I do these days ... when I get home from work I force myself to eat a few bites of something and then retreat to the sunny front steps and read. I have gone through books this summer at an alarming rate (for me anyway) ... always buying them ... my sister tells me I should go to the library and check them out ... but I tell her that if I love a book I want to keep it so I can read it again like watching an old movie over and over. I have had no energy at all for months . . . thought it was part of this depression ... I have heard that people who are depressed can't seem to enjoy or do things that they once loved ... I don't even want to iron ... and I love to iron. Forget washing the kitchen floor or vacuuming the cat hair ... I went to the Dr. on Tuesday and was told that I needed a B-12 shot . . . The Dr. told me that the level of B-12 in your blood should be 1100 and mine is 270 ... she said "you must be exhausted" ... "I am and depressed as hell" ... So there I was Thursday night reading and a car slowly pulled up in front of my house slowly the window rolled down and an old woman asked if she could speak to me. I went down to her and and she pointed to a house across the street and one house down and said "I live there and it's not that I watching you, but I am old and have nothing better to do than look out my window all day." She told me that a cat circles my house all day as if doing guard duty ... a fluffy gray, brown cat. She wanted to know if it was my cat ... I told her I had two cats in the house but that I had been feeding this stray cat for 3 years and had named him Smokie. I explained that Smokie had disappeared a month ago and I have not seen him since. She had not seen him recently herself. What I did not tell her was that I didn't realize how much I care about that old cat until he licked my shin and looked up at me like he cared for me that morning he disappeared...Now knowing that he guarded my house everyday ... circling it over and over only made me sadder. She told me it was finally nice to meet me after all these years ... She said her name was Mary ... I said "very nice to meet you Mary I am Sharon ... I have lived here for 23 years ... 20 with my ex- husband and 3 by myself" ... "Men" she said and shook her head as if she knew my story ... we both laughed and I said "maybe you knew my Grandfather, Alfred Jacobson, this was his home." She lowered her head ... I thought she was trying to remember ... when she raised it she had a big smile on her face ... "Roy (as his good friends called him) was your grandfather ... Roy was a friend of my husbands and mine ... those boys loved their drinks!" (I wanted to say I'm pretty fond of mine too) ... Then she looked puzzled and said I remember him saying several times that a Jacobson will always live in that house ... I told her how on his deathbed he had made me promise that a Jacobson would always live in his house ... and how I was the only person with him when he took his last breath ... and isn't it ironic that here I am living here and now with my maiden name back ... a Jacobson. So everything happens for a reason ... if I hadn't been so exhausted everyday I would have done other things and not just sit on my front steps and read ... and I never would have met Mary or known about that fluffy cat and his guard duty ... and I would never have known that a statement my grandfather made some 60 years ago ... I have been able to make true ...
