55 the first hours of the last day of 2008. "I got a bad marriage she said"

On this last day of 2008 I got out of my bed 0900 o'clock. The lake was nearly completely frozen and the surface smooth except on some places where long ridges betrayed the fruitful last attempts of the wind to keep the water flowing. In the middle hundreds of birds motionless in an ice-hole. Where will they go to when King Frost strikes the final blow?
I shave: a 30 second achievement. Wash. Brush teeth. I remember: funeral today of a far far away relative of relatives. But I will also visit my neighbour.
It is 09.20 and I ring the doorbell of this 86 year old lady. I want to wish her a good new year, but not only coffee and sigarettes are the additional reasons for my visit.
She stumbles to her tiny kitchen in the corner. Returns with my first coffee of the day. Offers me a sigarette.
"I drop in to wish you a very good 2009."
"Thank you,' she answers," do you want an other one?'
"I would like, but sorry, I have to go. There is a funeral waiting for me.'
She offers me a second sigarette.
"Near you, close by?"
"No."
I tell her the story of the 60 plus mother who committed suicide by jumping before the wheels of a car. The day after Christmas. The day after the familymeeting where in the memory of all present she played- played? yes played I guess- the caring, sharing, humorous and gentle mother and grandmother.
I won't reveal my neighbours name, I call her M.
"Yesterday it is 17 year ago my husband died,' M says.
Another time she had told me already she had never cried and while observing her I could not
detect any sign of gleaming of her eyes.
"Where you happy with him?' I asked
"I have made many mistakes in my life, she said.
"Lovers?"
"No,"she said, not in the least disturbed by my question."You know I have been calvinistically educated. Submissive. The other always has the priority. My husband was an adopted child and he could never find his biological parents. He suffered. i was the nurse, so to speak. I discovered it after his death: I had a bad marriage."
Silence. No movements. Outside the sky is grey, seemingly frozen.
"But you must also have had happy moments."
M looked up. A smile breaks through. I am not sure if it is happy one or one of those smiles
that reconcile us with a hopeful memory that ended up false.
"I tell you Jan,' M said," after 10 years of marriage my father in law died. I was suffering from a nasty rash, irritating, painful, hardly bearable in the back of that car that drove us to the graveyard.'
She took a sigaret but did not light it.
"And then, Jan, he put his arms around my shoulders and kind of hugged me.'
I waited, there was more to come.
"For the first time,' she said.

After a while I stood up and did what I had to do.

Standing on the threshold of her door- in the freezing cold- she waited untill I had removed the ice from the windows of the car and she stood there waving me goodbye until I had made the far corner to the mainroad.