Eleanor Rigby

I watched her everyday. I would sit there during lunch and watch her be all-alone. There was no one ever there and no one ever greeted her. She was like part of the scenery, something that never existed.

I wondered how come she was always lonely, how come no one ever came to her. Where did she come from and where did she belong? There must be somewhere that these people belonged, somewhere where people talked to them and loved them and appreciated them.

Eleanor Rigby.
She was a beautiful woman in her late twenties.

I had only talked to her once in my life, it was when I went to get a cup of coffee and she stood in front of me. I started up a five-minute conversation and I had learned that she was a very intelligent woman, highly educated, but she spent all of her time at church. Father McKenzie would need help from time to time and she was there to provide it. She was a woman of God, someone that would never let her mind flourish to it’s full potential.

It was lunchtime once again on a warm Wednesday morning and I sat on my usual bench, coffee in hand and my sandwich in the typical brown paper bag. I wasn’t unique like Eleanor Rigby was; I was the typical human that never caught your eye. I wore the same black suit as everyone did and ate the same typical lunch from the bland brown paper bag.

But today was no typical day. You see this morning old St. Patrick’s church had a wedding. The stairs were covered in rice and the banisters and doors had lace and balloons all over the place. The wedding had ended some time ago; there was no one in the church or on the streets. No one, except for Eleanor Rigby.

There she was outside in her audaciously loud green and blue and yellow skirt that reached her ankles, her loose white button up shirt and a red hat. Nothing that she wore ever matched, but she didn’t care. Her personality was intrepid and her intellect ranked high above all others. She didn’t need to dress like me and like the rest of the world. Eleanor Rigby was unique and she had to show it.

I watched as she walked the church steps, a smile on her face while she cared a plastic bag. The broom stood by the parish entrance, but it didn’t seem that she would be using it any time soon. She would slowly bend down and pick up each grain of rice individually. She would examine each anomalous piece as if it was just that, as if it was an individual and unique. All of the grain’s of rice ended up in the same plastic bag, but I watched as she picked one grain up and starred at it for what seemed like an eternity.

Eleanor Rigby smiled the widest I had ever seen her smile and she pulled out a tiny little purse from her boot. Opening it up she dropped the grain of rice in there, put it away and continued cleaning the stairs up. I couldn’t watch her much longer, I had to get back to work, I had to get back to my typical life. But that day I had realized something that most didn’t.

Eleanor Rigby, she lived in a dream.