Her home was the contents of the old child’s push chair at her side, her left hand resting on the bundle of plastic bags strapped onto the seat. She had spent the night sitting here on this bench at the top of the hill overlooking the market square, disdaining the shop doorways the other “rough sleepers” preferred. It was too competive and occasionally violent down there, driven by the strange mix of materials folks ingested or injected. She felt safer away from them, and the hill was just enough of a climb to deter most of them from following her up here.
From here she could see their house, could still hear the babble of children playing, her Bert’s gentle chiding when they squabbled but those years were long gone. The house was still a burnt out ruin, no one wanted to build on the site of such a tragedy. In her memory it was still just as it had been but she was looking back into that life from afar, a great gulf separated her from that love and from the joy of being loved.
She was well known in the town, tolerated by those who remembered, scorned by more recent arrivals and those who just saw another drunken failure of a human being, not noticing that she was never drunk, just so very broken . But those who knew, gave her food and sustained her vigil for that was what it was, until one day she was found cold and at peace, still clutching the remains of her home her real life.
The small family church on the corner of the square organised a funeral and was full, with those who remembered all that she had been and the broken person she had become. It turned out that she was remembered with fondness and that over the years of her vigil she had done many small good deeds for so many people.
The following summer, the ruined hose was demolished and a smart new home built on the site. A young couple from out of town moved in and soon the babble of children playing was heard again
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