Most home owners in the area, including those who have succeeded the original home-buyers take pride in what they own, care given to the exterior of their homes, at the very least. He always carefully groomed the sparse gardens surrounding their home, and even once, many years back, had installed a small cobbled infrastructure area of the garden directly in front of the front entrance.

He was, back then -- when we first became acquainted as neighbours living a street apart -- tall and lean and appeared quite fit. He certainly had no lack of self-confidence. She was a small woman, spare in both height and frame, a mere wisp of a woman it seemed back then, yet sprightly and sparking enthusiasm. That was then; in the last several years we haven't seen him at all, only Margaret, wending her slow and careful way along the street, doing a walking loop from her street to ours.

In the winter she is cocooned in layers of cold-protective down padding her small frame. When we occasionally meet she no longer regales us as once they did, with details about their travels, accompanied with a genteel scorn for the natives indigenous to the countries they would visit. She is originally from Nova Scotia and it is only visits back 'home' that enthuse her now. But family members are dwindling gradually in number and although the incomparable environmental scenery and remembrances of times past still draw her, even those visits have declined. Her husband, born in southern Ontario, had no wish to re-locate when he retired.

They continue to live in a fairly spacious two-story house, which they continue to maintain nicely, now with the help of hired professionals.

Each time we see Margaret, no longer nearly as often as formerly, she has diminished in size and colouration, her perambulation more studied and careful. She has decided to opt for surgery to her spine. Her husband keeps putting off the surgery he needs to remove his teeth, both putting up with the debilitating pain they suffer while they wait and until they decide how and whether to proceed with something annoyingly intrusive but which might alleviate their pain and discomfort. Disruption of routine is meaningful, now.

It's hard for us to imagine how much more it is possible that she could physically vanish from life. When she approaches us with the ghost of a smile on her pale face to politely enquire how our health has been we cannot help an inward shudder. For that query, just as politely satisfied in the affirmative "well, thank you", represents an opening when the details of their misery can gush forth to bring us up to date on the rigours of age rapidly overcoming the life cycle.

And we wonder whether they ever resent that we're quite a bit older than they are, with as yet unimpaired health.