TILDY
I was telling my wife about Tildy (not her real name) the other day. I liked Tildy from the first time I met her saucy irreverence across the counter at the Main Post Office in town. I walked in, saw a line and made some snarkycomment about the slow service, jokingly of course, to which she responded in kind , something about slow service for slow customers, I carried it a little further and in a couple of minutes we had all the people on that line laughing and smiling and talking to one another.
It is a scene that has been oft repeated over the course of more than a few years. When the place was empty on my entry, we actually engaged in conversations of a few minutes. It is rare that the post office is empty, occasionally we got to chat for a longer time and we got to know each other a little.
She came in a few years back to have a will done, as she was having some health issues. She also wanted to discuss her divorce options, her husband had left the marital abode. She was saddled with the mortgage and the children. The children are mostly grown now, her son has one more year of school.
See, Tildy was stricken with arthritis, the kind that attacks the body and distorts the joints and the bones, including the bones of the face. The progression was dramatic in the way it overtook her. Her back curved, her hands began to lock, her ability to walk diminished, her heart gave her issues, her jaw distorted her face. Her husband packed and left, something that came close to causing her to give up, for she was left high and dry. Her mother moved in and took on some of the burdens of kid issues. Her mother died a couple of years ago and again she was alone, she was bowed by that loss but unbroken. She told me that her mother taught her how to be a mother and she missed her greatly. But she soldiered on through aches, pains and distress. She kept smiling and engaged her customers even though the eyes revealed the aches and the pain to me. She could barely sit on the stool, but she never let on to others, but I knew the truth. Medical trials and changes in drugs came and went but nothing seems to stem the progression of her disease..
Last week as I went in, she gave me the sign that she wanted to talk to me. I waited for her to get free and as I went up to the counter, she told me that Dec.31 was her last day. The Postal Service had an incentive retirement, she had more than 33 years in and at age 59 she sensed that her body was shutting down and she needed to try and find a more amiable climate.
I said all of the polite things, but what I did not say was that to me she is sort of a hero. She of course would not hear of it, but she is. She did what she had to do, without complaint, in the face of pain and against all odds. She is made of the sterner stuff, the stuff we all need a dose of occasionally.
I hope 2013 finds her reading a book on a