Although I don't actually imagine her bulk to have been much decreased in the decades since I first became acquainted with her, I can recall that at one time she was able to toddle along on the street. This is something she has not done in years, not even to walk the few yards up the street we live on to retrieve her mail from the group mailbox. The only real discernible alteration in all those years is that once she had been accustomed to grooming herself carefully and now she looks slovenly in dress and personal hygiene.

After all, it must be horribly difficult to perform even the most mundane tasks of grooming and washing oneself if you are just over five feet tall and perfectly, spherically rotund. At a guess I would venture between 325 and 350 pounds, but who knows, she could weigh more. Her mother, as I recall, was grossly overweight but not quite as morbidly obese as my neighbour who lives directly across the street. Her brother whom I've never seen is afflicted with Asperger's and seldom ventures outside his rented accommodation.

I have met her sister who lives in Calgary, who up to about eight-ten years ago used to visit on occasion. That sister is overweight, but not obese, although by now, since she has mobility only with a wheelchair, she may have attained that weight status. This sister suffers from deeply afflicting arthritis, but there is also something else which I cannot recall, and which on occasion caused her to blank out. Despite which condition, she still drove, and while she was driving her little girl somewhere about ten years ago she just happened to lose consciousness. The resulting accident killed her only child, and caused her grievous brain injuries necessitating a number of operations, successful ones. It's hard to imagine how she rationalizes the death of her daughter and her own recovery.

My neighbour, when we first came to know one another, had a young boy of her own. Very tall and robust for his age, he was forever teased by his classmates. Yet, because he was a brute of a young boy who didn't know his own strength and how to discipline himself, he was feared by them. The result was a good degree of social alienation, few friends and outbursts of fury and confusion. But he prevailed and became a kind and gentle hulk of a man, closely attached to his mother for emotional support.

He and his step-father, the current husband of our hugely-proportioned neighbour did not get on well together. The young boy secured a fairly good relationship with his father, estranged from his mother, however. She is generous with him, to a fault, financing his purchase of a home of his own, and supporting him when he has been between jobs in the high-tech industry. Largely self-taught, but gifted, as so many young people are in that direction.

It's a puzzle to me that, living so long in such an obviously compromising condition of health, my neighbour, despite her enormous girth, has not suffered from chronic, disabling diseases, like diabetes, a heart condition. To my knowledge she takes medication only for depression. Truth to tell, she has much to be depressed about. This winter her husband whose own health is not wonderful, and who smokes only outside the house, on the porch, had a very serious bout with an illness that just slipped my memory, necessitating a long hospital stay. He picks up very remunerative government contracts in computer programming. And, before her retirement about fifteen years ago, she worked alongside him in government. They both left that employ at the same time to work with private industry, a giant software firm that does business globally.

It's likely that after her retirement she continued to gain weight and girth, although she was so utterly wrapped in fat when I first knew her that I could hardly recognize weight gain; she seems to me now as she was then, but obviously not. I cannot imagine her climbing the stairs to the second floor of her house, to reach her bedroom, returning the journey in the morning to have access to the first floor. A necessity since she owns, and dotes on, three cats.

Such are the lives of our friends and neighbours.