Free My Life Across the Table by Karen Page Page B

travel once, but then I got my job, and who would take care of my family if I went away somewhere?”
The sadness I had fought off earlier loomed in front of me once again. I could only tell her what I saw, “I don’t see a husband or boyfriend here, either Marta. You’ve never been married.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.
Pain underlined her every word, “No…No husband. I’ve never been married, but you knew that Karen. I’ve never even had a boyfriend.”
I thought the grief in my heart, for the tragedy of this beautiful woman’s life was going to completely overtake me. I could barely speak. Fighting the onslaught of tears was simply useless, as I was certain I was drowning. Once again diving into the box of Kleenex, only this time I was grabbing them by the handful.
Marta’s lonely, empty world of duty and denial, threatened to swallow me whole.
There were no more tears from Marta. She looked at me with quiet concern in her eyes, “Are you okay, Karen?”
My body shook, wracked by gut wrenching sobs, as I buried my face in a wad of Kleenex, trying to choke out my anguished words, “Why did you come to see me? I can’t tell you that anything is going to change. I can’t make something up.”
She was quiet for several minutes. Her steady gaze watching as my body shook with pain and grief, for her.
When she finally spoke, her words were soft, and filled with resignation, “I just wanted confirmation, and I knew you would tell me the truth. I knew you wouldn’t lie to me. I am sorry this is so painful for you, but this is my life.”
Realizing how calm she was, and how completely resigned to her life she truly was, began to quiet my grief, “Oh Marta, I wish I could change something for you, but I cannot. You were a great gift to your family, do you know that?”
A faint smile crossed her lips, “Yes, and they were wonderful parents. They were my gift.” In a way I couldn’t begin to understand, she felt more peaceful, “Thank you for this.”
I was incredulous, “This what? You are thanking me for telling you this is your life, and nothing is ever going to change?”
Marta’s smile brought an abrupt end to my tears. Clearly we looked at her reading through very different eyes, “Yes, I know this is my life, Karen. I only wanted confirmation, and that is what you gave me. I knew that my life was never going to change, and I got exactly what I came for, so yes, thank you.”
We talked for a few minutes without tears, before she went home to take care of her uncle. Marta’s life had remained, exactly as it had been an hour and a half earlier. She was content and peaceful with her reading.
I however, had been deeply affected, and forever changed by the circumstances of her life, and by what I had experienced in her reading. The sadness she left me with never really went away. Even now, as I write her story, I cry when I think about the tiny world she inhabited, for almost sixty years.
This beautiful woman had never traveled more than five miles from her home, and never would. The same home she had been brought home to as a newborn was the only one she had, and would, ever know. She had nursed both her mother and father, for many years until their deaths, and was now taking care of her terminally ill uncle.
This was her life.
All of the circumstances in Marta’s life saddened me. I wished so much more for her. I wished her a bigger, fuller, emotionally fulfilled life, but that was not the destiny she had chosen. This was.
There was one tragic reality of Marta’s life, the one that has impacted me deeply, since the day I met her. The one I weep over, still.
This warm, smart, kind, beautiful woman had never known any other love except parental. No one had ever so much as held her hand. She had never loved or been loved, and had never experienced so much as the passion of a lover’s kiss. I knew with great certainty, Marta had never known the joy of being in love, nor would it ever be a part