remembering barbara

There was an old man on the train today, dishevelled and dirty, he wasn't travelling anywhere in particular, he just seemed to like trains. Without pausing for oxygen he recounted a stream of tales from his past, about weird uncles, bad tempered camels and trips to Skeg. Eventually he told the strangers in the carriage that his wife, Barbara, had died just 6 weeks earlier of cancer - at home in their bed. For a reason that I can't quite work out, she had asked him not to call and tell anyone she'd passed until rigor mortis had set in. When the time came and he knew her last breath was spent, he dutifully went to watch films in the other room, waiting for the cold stiffness of death so he could tell someone. His birthday was on the 3rd of March. He sent himself a card and signed it with love from Barbara as she'd told him to.