Craig was a lot like the rest of the men I knew, busy and hardworking. He mowed lawns for the neighbors, or had a project of some kind going on. He was a musician, and also, an outdoorsman like many boys and men who live out of town. I was saying not too long ago to a friend that I think most men would be happiest chopping wood and taking care of cows all days and I do believe that is true most of the time.

I had another neighbor, the amazing Ruth and I wish I could write her last name here because that is how she is known to me, Ruth F_____. I have never been able to just call her Ruth without using her full given name. She had been married twice, but the marriages ended in just a few years, both husbands succumbing to an illness. I loved how she referred to her husbands as "Mr. ______ " or "Mr. ______." She never called them by their first names. She was married longest to the first one and had children with him, but chose to keep the last name of Mr. F_____. I think she was most in love with him.

She took care of herself and her lawn using a sickle to cut down the weeds, she cleaned her own gutters, painted and built things; or she called people to come and paint and build things for her. She wrote books, bought and sold amazing items and made her own way in life; a very independent person and and interesting one.

One day I came home from school and I heard a yelling from behind me after I put my car in the garage. I heard "Helloooo, is anyone there???" I wandered over to Ruth's yard and saw a ladder laying on the ground and my eyes followed the sound of her voice to the roof of her house, and there she sat. "Hello K_____, why, would you put that ladder back up against the house? I've been up here all day."

She still refers to that day as the day I saved her from the roof.

She would invite me into her home sometimes and it was the most wonderful place because she was a collector and an antiques dealer. Her main area of interest was crystal perfume bottles and glass made in Czechoslovakia. Why those from there? I never really knew, but that was her great love and specialty. And if you get a chance, google Czechoslovakian Perfume Bottles and you will see some of the ones that were once in her collection. She had hundreds of them in curio cabinets and they were gorgeous. She's considered elderly now and not too many years ago she and her sister were in a bad wreck on the freeway; she sold all of her bottles after that.

I was thinking how once she gave me a great compliment though, one of the best of my life. She knew how I loved to find treasures in second-hand stores and she asked me about a house I was living in. As an adult I've lived in old ones and this was just a few years ago when I told her on the phone about something I bought to furnish it, she said, "Why is it new?" and I laughed, "Ofcourse not." And she replied, "Good! Why K____, you are a young Ruth F_______."

We kept in touch by phone, sometimes I rode my bike to see her because we had all moved back to town, all of us were living in other homes. My parents divorced, the house in the country sold to another family, our things divided and that part of life over; the light switched off before closing the door.

But strange, strange things occur in life. The day after my mom died Ruth called me and we spoke at length about the loss. She was so calm, and after quite a long time on the phone she said to me, "Why K_____, I wanted to tell you this. Your mom was here."

I was shocked because I didn't know what she meant. My mother's body had not been returned to us from the town where it had been taken after the crash. I was still in a stage of denial about it so it was hard for me to comprehend time and what Ruth was telling me.

I said, "What do you mean? When?"
She said, "Yesterday."

I honestly thought for the briefest moment that someone got it all wrong and that Mom was misidentified, and simply over at Ruth's house waiting. It was, ofcourse, not the case, but apparently my mother stopped at her house on her way out of town the day before. She went to visit the beautiful house my dad had built for her in the country. Ruth told me that they went outside to take a walk around it, and followed the yard around to the back, went aways into the wood, then returned to Ruth's house for tea. She said the conversation was odd, and although my mother seemed under stress, she was lucid and calm there.

I swallowed hard when I asked her, "Did it seem like she knew she was going to die?'
Ruth said, "Not at all."
And then she told me, "But I had the polaroid camera out and was taking photos of the bottles for selling... and why K____, I took her picture."

I have it in a box here in my attic with some of her other things. I never show it to anyone because it is not a flattering photo. But she is smiling, the perfume bottles are behind her in Ruth's curios, sparkling and beautiful.