We part

Over the next year or so I visited Ellen at her house.   My sister Theresa visits Ellen every week and was once there with her husband and two children Paul and Leanne so they met their Uncle David.  But usually it was just me and Ellen although sometimes my wife came too.

I never really got much out of the visits.  She did not seem inclined to talk about the past but I suppose it was so long ago and maybe it was a period in her life she would rather forget.  I know being an unmarried mother and homeless in those times was looked upon very differently from today.

But if we weren't going to talk about our past, there seemed little else we had in common.  She seemed to talk about the mundane things as older people sometimes do.  Being honest, I found it hard work making conversation.  

The fire of relationships needs fuel from more than one person.  From the time we met and during the period of my visits neither Ellen or my sister ever called me.  It was always me making the effort.  I expect they were not too bothered and I do understand that.  I suppose I did not really mean much to them

So my visits tailed off.  I've not seen her since about 1998 and I've never heard from either of them.  I do think about her and hope she's OK, but I think it would be unfair, and perhaps selfish of me, to try enter her life again. 

Postscript

Ten years later, in 2007 Theresa rang to tell me Ellen had died at the ripe old age of 90. I travelled across south London to find the cemetery empty. I had arrived too late

I drove on to Theresa's house where I again met Theresa, Pat and their two children, now considerably grown up. Theresa said they were the only people to attend the service apart from a nurse at the nursing home where Ellen had spent her last years.