Words left for the dead

My home never had a fireplace, or anything remotely similar to a fireplace, so my memories of fire come from someone else's hearth. My best friend's grandmother lived in a dark, narrow street in the village, in a very old house - one of those old houses with the toilet outside, in the backyard. I haven't been there for years, and I don't expect to ever get back there; but whenever I look at a small and cosy fire burning in a fireplace, I'll remember her hearth, small, painted in a thick yellow outside. I remember the wooden chairs around it, the worn coloured pillows on them, the warmth of the fire in that cold house, the white cat always sitting in the chair closest to the fire, purring all night long. It was the only white cat of the whole village - I dare say, of the whole county. I cannot remember who gave the cat to my friend, for both me and him were rather young when it happened. Nor do I know how did that mysterious person came across a white cat in the first place, in an area when all cats were gray, yellow, black or all these colours together. It doesn't matter though: the cat was white, snowy-white, unique in every possible way. My friend could not keep the cat at his own place, so he left it at his grandmother, recently widowed. And when he left the village few years later, the cat remained with the old lady, purring by the hearth in the cold winter nights. I remember it clearly, for I was there quite often, the cat being mine in a way - I was one of the very few people he liked - and my friend's grandmother being like a grandmother to me, the one I never had close to me during my childhood. There were several old ladies from my village that could win the title of grandmother, actually, and I liked them all the same. One of them, who used to take me to the football matches, died long ago in a sad accident at home. Another one died years ago, defeated by an old age, and a failing body - and yet, she was strong enough to refuse treatment. She wanted to die at her home, and not in some hospital, far away, locked inside unfamiliar walls. And so she did; and since her passing, I never tasted pomegranates as good as the one she used to gave me every autumn, for she had a pomegranate tree in her small farm. One of them still lives, still struggles against her health, her old age, her grief towards a never easy life. Her eyes shine whenever she sees me - and whenever she sees me, she tells me the same: that she likes me so much, that I'm like a grandson to her, that in fact she likes me better than most of her sons and daughters. I know it is true, and she is actually like my grandmother. All of them were. I never told it to any of them, and now that there's only one of them still alive, I suspect that I won't tell it to her. There's so many words left for the dead within me. I suppose it is more appropriated for me to die as well with them.

There is someone missing in the picture, of course. My friend's grandmother died not too long ago, after a long, quiet grief and a disease that ate away her memories and her conscient mind. After I left the village I saw her only a couple of times, if that much; the last time I saw her I was stepping out of the train, and she was going in, helped by her older daughter. I only recognized her because of her daughter, and it shocked me to see that old lady from my childhood so wrinkled, so sick, so defeated. She died shortly after. The white cat had died long ago - lucky him, he didn't saw the fire on that house being put out forever. I remember the cat as he grown up, and become a huge, powerful cat, able to beat in fighting any other cat in the village, and most of the dogs too. His territory was a wide part of the village. But his hideoud was that old house, with his seat by the warm hearth. Nowadays there are still some white cats in the village, the descendents of the old and seasoned warrior. But none is like it. Cats, too, are never the same. Like people.