justplainbil

Just Plain Bill

Bayden McGregor

A few years ago, my 96-year old mother, Winnie, asked if anything had come for her in the mail.

First, some background.

Winnie had been living with my wife and me since she turned 92. We took her out of a convalescent home and retrofitted a special room and bath for her in our home. Soon after we brought her “home”, we observed both her physical and mental health improving significantly. Her skin tone turned from almost-transparent porcelain-looking, to a healthy pink color. Her hair stopped falling out and she even started to hum along with the TV!  She was able to use her walker to get around on her own much easier, which was far better for her overall health.

Each afternoon, the mail was delivered from the outside through the slot in the door to her room. She liked to look through the catalogs that came on a regular basis but one spring day, my mother asked the question shared in the first paragraph: “Did anything come for me in the mail?”

My wife and I asked Winnie if she was expecting mail for someone in particular. She replied, “When I was in my early 20s, I was being escorted by a young man, Bayden McGregor, who wore a kilt, and whose father was in the Scottish Guard. After a few months of courtship, we were on a walk and came upon a cute little house with a white picket fence around the yard.

“Bayden said to me that he’d like us to live in a house just like that, to which I replied that I had always wanted to live in a high-rise suite in one of the tallest buildings in Winnipeg, just like I had seen in a movie.

“Soon after that afternoon walk, Bayden stopped coming around and we eventually lost touch. All these 70+ years, I’ve been thinking that I hurt his feelings and that my comment about where we might live had caused him to drop out of my life.

“The letter I’m awaiting is one I’m expecting from Bayden. In the letter I imagine him to say that our disagreement about where we’d live was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and that he wanted to start seeing me again.

“All these years, I’ve regretted saying what I did about our choices of living quarters. I want to tell him I’d love to live in the house with the white picket fence, and that I hope we can ‘patch things up’ and start spending some time together.”  

My mom was a real romantic. This story of unrequited love provides a brief but vivid remembrance of a time gone by. After talking a bit about Bayden, and other loves of her life, Winnie perked up and a twinkle came to her eye. I reassured my mom that she had made the best decisions possible with the resources she had at the time, and the result was still a life full of joy and love. That twinkle never left her eye.