Nadia is an old lady who walks up and down my street picking flowers from the neighbors’ gardens, with a leash wrapped around her hand. Last time I saw her, I found one of these flowers in my purse when I arrived home.  I don’t know if it fell there when I hugged her or if she placed it in for me to find. Sharing her ‘stolen’ bounty the way she shares her smile and her cryptic wisdom.

She punctuates her sentences with the nonsensical words “tra la la”, smiles, and says good bye with a sincere “God bless” not out of religious fervor but out of love and goodness.

The other day, when I saw her, I noticed the brilliance of her white hair, more like sparkling silver in the sunlight, falling in soft curls around her face, held in place with a plastic comb. With Nadia, the layers of her life, like a rich, breathtaking book, are visible. When she smiles, I can see the curious little girl she must have been, the twinkle in her eye from her first love, long ago, the earnest dedication she would have poured in everything she did as a second world war nurse, the quiet but vast recognition of grace in making it across the ocean as an immigrant, trying to escape the past.

Today, indefinitely old, she walks my street up and down with a leash wrapped around her left hand. She keeps the right hand free for picking flowers from the neighbors’ gardens and perhaps dropping them in my purse.

There’s a reason for the leash. She’s walking the ghost of her beloved retriever Buddy. I remember seeing them walk slowly in the evening, when the air was cool. Buddy was old and scruffy, dying of cancer, tumors visible on his wobbly legs. They made a touching pair. The bond as visible as if they were one. When Buddy died, Nadia continued walking, missing him, as if she lost a part of her heart.

Someday I hope Buddy runs towards her, like in the scene from the movie “What dreams may come”, and they’ll never be apart again. But I don’t know what beliefs come true beyond the horizon line.

Nadia, beautiful soul, I hope in your case the version about the existence of heaven is right.