And There She Stood

All through life we are opening and closing doors...for ourselves, for others.

We wade through many different chapters, dance across pages of life that all lead to similar or different endings...endings that in one way or another bring us to a resting spot that's still and quiet.

It's the dancing we look back upon when the music stops.

An antique shop a couple blocks from my home closed it's doors about a year ago. My husband and I were going for an evening stroll and passed by it. Our walking path was altered slightly by an elderly couple standing outside the shop's doors.

Standing and staring. Peering at the door, and at each other. Jiggling their keys and slowly locking things up. It would be the last time they would be locking those doors.

You could tell they had invested a lifetime in their shop of antiques. Times change though, and it was obvious that the their time had come to move on from the shop. From the appearance of their age, I would guess that they were retiring.

I haven't given that antique shop or the elderly couple much thought beyond that moment. Until today.

I walked by that same shop this morning, which has been a convenience mart/news shop since the ownership changed.

At first glance it looked no different from any other day I walk past it.

Then I peered into the window. A woman standing there looking out caught my attention.

She looked devastated. Eyes filled with tears. Hands clutching her chest as if she were holding something very special up to her heart.

And then I recognized her. It was the wife of the elderly couple who had once owned this store.

Was she there remembering the times her and her husband shared in their antique store?

Was she there mourning the loss of her husband? Seeking out the comfort of a place where her and her husband had spent so many years 'dancing'?

As I walked by the news shop, there she stood...people coming and going around her as if time had stopped for her, and she was trying to find a quiet spot to find the memory of her past.