The Woman on Walnut Street
In a chaotic world like ours, there’s only the need to disassociate and send out words of love and light. What did your partner get you for Valentines Day? Did they gift you a stuffed bear from the local pharmacy? No? You’re not with the right person; they don’t love you as they should. In fact, no one loves you. No one will love you the way the woman on Walnut Street was loved.
Everyone has heard the saying about having a nickel for every time you hear something. It’s a timeless classic, just like the common exchange had each time people pass by a cemetery. They question the houses surrounding it, who in their right mind would choose to live here? Oh, I bet they got a good deal.
I watch the red heart shaped ballon float in the car of the woman on Walnut Street and wonder what kind of tradition she holds. Her house facing the cemetery filled with loved ones, facing her husband. What does Valentines Day mean to her? Perhaps, the physical distance makes up for the lost symbolic one. The balloon could be for herself, she left it in the car because even though it’s not a big difference, it would be closer to him. The red heart may be a gift, an apology from the men who tried to steal the last connection with the loss of her life. All the rumors and news articles of the world could never answer these questions.
The black and blue sign on the snowy lawn was almost humorous. What did that mean? Forgetting about the tragic love story and lonely Valentines Days, why was it impossible to consider that people with different beliefs from mine, love just as I do? Louisa May Alcott tells her readers of Little Women that “Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason.” Now who are the sour sisters and why are they Jo and Amy? However, in this case, is the sour sister the woman who lost her husband and pokes her grass to protect the men in blue and white SUVs, or is it me, the girl writing a judging yet somewhat sympathetic piece on her? Maybe this is why I didn’t get a balloon last Friday.
The sweetest part of her life that she misses is the privilege to grow old with her lover, to be able to laugh with him at the psychos who buy houses next to cemeteries. She misses the sweetest gift of a heart shaped balloon that he drove after work to buy for his wife. The lady on Walnut Street misses the part of life when she could listen to her husband’s heartbeat as she lay on his chest to sleep every night.
Where do I go from here and how do I become less of a Jo and more of a Meg? How do I turn into the sister that oozes constant compassion. How do I stop myself from shaming her contrasting dreams? I could question her humanity, but I should also question my own. Can two things really be true at once? Am I allowed to shake my head at her lawn sign but also pray for peace on her lonely nights at home? In this chaotic world, sometimes it’s easy to neglect the duality of being human.