How to Get Born Before You Die

How to be Friends with Old People

Ms. Elva was the absolute definition of a little old lady. On Sundays, she had someone from her Church drive her to Publix to get her weekly groceries, on Tuesdays and Saturdays she visited with a friend and gossiped about the happenings in the neighborhood, and on Thursdays she went to a tiny little hair Salon right off of Charlotte Pike across from an old car repair shop.

I remember first meeting her on a Halloween night, dressed up as Spider-Man. She opened the door, let out a little honk of surprise and a giggle, and kindly ushered me and my two siblings in. For some reason I can recall what happened next with almost crystal clear vision: she sat us down on the couch, took a seat in her pillow-laden wooden armchair, and said:

"Ahh...so you're a princess (my sister nodded enthusiastically)...you're a knight (my brother beamed)...and you're...hmm...oh! Superman!" I was incredulous.

That exchange perfectly summed up my relationship with Ms. Elva for the next couple of years. How could anyone not know who Spider-Man was? It was unbelievable. An outrage, even. I wanted to bring my colossal hardcover Spider-Man book into her house, plop it down onto her crystal glass coffee table, and give her a proper education.

In fifth grade, I began my first job (self-employed, of course). I went up and down the neighborhood and asked the neighbors if I could take their trash cans to the street for 50 cents. In a neighborhood of older ladies, this business was fairly marketable, and my four customers ended up being Ms. Ann (another old woman who lived in the house to our left with her two ancient dogs), Ms. Natalie (a young 20-something woman who seemed to have a different male roommate every night, thus being the topic of many of the neighborhood whisperings), Ms. Nealy (another little old lady who was obsessive about her garden to the point of probable insanity), and, of course, Ms. Elva. In 5th and 6th grade, I saw Ms. Elva almost every Wednesday. I would run up her steps after taking the trash cans back to get fifty cents or a dollar, and almost always stay and talk for half an hour about the new houses that were being put in, or how the plastic packaging on the apple danishes at Publix was surprisingly hard to get off.

As I got older, however, my life morphed from the practically carefree life of a 5th grader to the homework-laden life of a 7th grader to the girl-obsessed life of a 9th grader, and with my extracurricular activities piling up and my meetups with friends becoming more important to me, my visits to her turned from a welcome tradition to yet another requirement on my weekly checklist. I stopped making the march up the stone stairs every week. First, it was three times a month I would see her, then two, then one. I would always see her once a month at least, but (especially in early high school), the once-fantastic dollar bills I would get from her just couldn't compare to the lifeguarding job I had taken up, or the girl I was going out with. I did take comfort in the fact that she still had another weekly visitor, an old neighbor of ours named Monty, who returned from his fancy new Brentwood life every three or four days to check up on her.

This was around the time that Ms. Elva began to have serious health problems. I remember very specifically one afternoon when I stopped in to visit, having head about her visit to the doctor from my mother, and I asked her if she was alright and what was going on.

"Weeell," she began, with her usual half-sigh half-laugh, "they've told me I can't drive anymore. And I have to get weekly injections now."

I realized she was talking about her eyes. She assured me that everything was fine and that she didn't hurt very much, but I could see how bloodshot her left eye was. I made a resolution to start visiting Ms. Elva more often, which I did all through 10th grade.

The end of 10th grade, however, was when I realized that my mother and father were having marital issues. Every divorce is messy in some way, and my parents' divorce was extremely messy emotionally and religiously. Because of this, I became less available to talk to and visit Ms. Elva. Sure, I drove her down to her hair salon of choice a few times, and to Publix whenever she needed an apple danish or two. But I was never there as often as before. I had a plan last semester to set up a microphone and interview her about her life when I realized how little I actually knew about her. How had her husband Henry died? What type of things did she like to do at my age? Did she have any old picture books or journals I could see? Every week I told myself: I'm going to go visit her after the holidays, I'm going next week. I'll call her today and ask her if I can interview her.

I never got the chance. I was walking out of a movie last week when I turned on my phone and saw that I had a voicemail from Monty. The voicemail relayed that Ms. Elva had passed away peacefully on Wednesday. She was buried three days ago.

I didn't go to her funeral. I told myself that the reason that I didn't go was that if I went I would be assaulted by other people's memories of her and they would mess with my own, clear vision of who she was as a person, but in reality I was scared of acknowledging the loss of perhaps the most solid constant I had ever had in my life. Instead of going to the funeral, I walked to her house. There was no old Buick in the driveway, but that was the only difference. Inside her glass screen door, I could see all her old dangly crystal antiques, all her angel clocks and cross-stitched throw pillows, and the industrial-sized bag of dog treats near the door (for the neighbors' puppy). I saw the gap between the fence and the brambles at the back of her yard that I always used to sneak through to get to my friend Santiago's house. And finally, I saw the trash cans, the staples of Ms. Elva and I's relationship. I can't even tell you how many times I had taken the cans up and down that old, steep driveway and collected the (now seemingly scanty) dollars from her old, warm, wrinkly hands.

Ms. Elva's constant and unwavering support is perhaps the greatest gift she gave me, though. The changing of my personality, the decreasing frequency of my visits, my weird habit of showing up to her house with gym clothes on, none of that mattered to her. She only focused on my feelings and the things I was saying, which I have adopted as my mantra. She was a real-life Superman, and it took me far too long to realize that, but in the words of Ms. Elva herself:

"When I was young, there were so many things that were trying to get my attention that I really mostly ignored the things that everyone wanted me to do. But...I don't know, maybe that was a good thing."