Pride and Compromise - contd
by Preethi Warrier
(Mumbai, India)
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Maria thought about it all night, she wept uncontrollably into the pillow. She was already seventy, could suffer from an attack again. She could either go to UK and live with Peter or stay back and be confined to a lonely life in this house, with no body to talk to and with nothing to do all day. She had loved Tony and Peter too much and couldn’t imagine living without them anymore.
And finally she decided, for the first time in her life she would swallow her pride and compromise with her daughter- in- law. She had lived her whole life on her own terms, but then, the very thought of being separated from Peter for life was unimaginable. After all, she would not live very long now, what difference would it make where she lived or where she died? Did it matter where a person was buried, once he was dead?
And today, sipping tea in her veranda, she thought to herself, “ Had she been wrong in asserting her control over Tony and Rosy? Had she been wrong all the while? The compromise that she was making now, couldn’t she have made it a few years back? If she had let Rosy cook, given her some privacy, let her take decisions for Tony and Peter, she could have had her Tony and her dearest Peter right here, playing with her, talking to her. After all, Rosy was a woman too. She did have some right over her husband and kid. Perhaps, if she had respected Mathew a bit, loved him, wouldn’t she have been less lonely now?”
She thought about it and sighed. In an effort to win all the time, she had lost big time. The furniture had all been sold and the caretaker had been told to water the trees.She knew it wouldn’t be long before Tony would sell off the house, so she would be confined to a small flat in London for the rest of her life.
She walked around the house, absorbing every bit of her last moments in the house. She then went into her bedroom and finished her last minute packing, her flight was in the afternoon, the cab would come soon, to take her to take Nedumbassery airport and she would leave her whole life behind.
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