Dear Elizabeth

It is finally winter today, with the temperature 23 degrees at 8 AM.  The cats are sleeping. Richard is sleeping.  It is Sunday morning, very quiet. 
You should know that the neighborhood has changed a bit.

The empty spaces, including the parking lot around the corner, the old restaurant called Dennises, have been filled in with luxury apartments.  The place above Teddy's is now an 8 floor luxury apartment building.  ON Tuesday nights we can see the poker game that takes place directly across from your bedroom.  We can also see a large picture of a woman's face that is hung in their living room.  I don't know if it is of someone personal to that household, or just a modern picture of a woman looking a bit dazed, a bit too gigantic for comfort in a space closed in, but we get to see her perfectly from 30 yards away.

Every year without you we continue, bereft, humbled, to live.
How Dina Aunty relished her memories. Mummy and Daddy were the same, talking about their yesterdays and smiling in that sad-happy way while selecting each picture, each frame from the past, examining it lovingly before it vanished again in the mist. But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be re-created—not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

> From A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry