It was warm for a November afternoon–too warm even for a sweater. I walked down Jarvis Street to Allen Gardens to enjoy the warm sunshine, with temperatures set to hit freezing in a week. The leaves were falling and had been falling for a good while by then–an ocean of rust to wade through, even as the trees stood bare and stark against the summerlike sky.

I was overdressed: ear warmers, a cropped sweater, and a jacket hanging on my left arm. I had been sick for two months since my recent travels and was determined to take no chances with the weather. I stood at the north edge of Allen Gardens, sketch book balancing on my jacket-bearing arm, as I drew the building across the street from me: 134 Carlton Street.

Oppressed by the sultry weather, my excessive choice in clothing, and my recent bout of ill health, I was in a sullen mood as I angrily hastened to capture my art. Just then, a dog came bounding towards me, off leash, of course. Irked by the creature and already flustered, I considered telling the owner off; I grumbled to myself about the boorish people who were allowed to house dogs, and the misery of having to live in such a city of idiots.

A stately old woman in a black sweater with her hair neatly pinned back followed the dog; she stopped to set her walking assistant off the footpath as she beckoned the dog towards her and leashed it. My face burned with shame at my impatience and quickness to judge. It was a service dog.

"I hope I didn't interrupt your art, my dear."

As she spoke, a wave of memory hit me. I realized that I recognized her from the summer gone past.

Earlier that year, I’d been sitting on a park bench in that same park with a most pompous date who was, at that very moment, imposing upon me photos of the million dollar condo he was going to buy. As she walked by, she stopped to appreciate our outwardly promising romance.

“What a lovely couple you make. Enjoy each other's company!”

For the sake of the story, I wish that the date had worked out—it did not.

I did, however, remember her that November afternoon.

“You! I know you! The boy.. you told us how lovely we were," I garbled, hoping she remembered me. I couldn't tell if she did, but she stopped to talk regardless.

“You should keep a fly swatter to chase away unwanted suitors,” she joked. "Yesterday was a hard day for me, so I'm glad to have met you,” she said as she started moving away.

“Do you want to talk about it?" I called after her, hoping she would stay to chat.

She told me that she was eighty-six years old; her only son, Gordon, was to be buried the day before in the grave of her husband's grandfather in a small town north of Toronto. The agency she had hired tried to dispose of the urns without a proper burial as they thought her to be an elderly cripple, unlikely to attend the ceremony. Gordon's friend who did show up had to call to tell her that nothing had been done by way of arrangements.

She had a phone-call with the archbishop that same day and gave him hell. Her husband, a hundred years old at the time, teased her:

"Is that how you talk to an archbishop?"

By the time I met her that afternoon, things had happened as planned, although not in the grave of her husband's grandfather as she would have liked. Gordon's friend assured her that the whole town was made aware; he had spent the previous night in four bars downtown, filling the locals in on the dubious practices of the agency.

Still, she was livid. Her only son's burial being shammed, the agency taking advantage of an elderly woman such as herself, the countless other people they must have been doing this to.

She told me that she was a writer, retired by then–Dr Marlene Anderson. That night, I tried to find her on the internet and found the parts of her story she’d left untold, the parts easier to gloss over by sleight of hand, especially to a stranger. Although her son's burial ceremony was performed just the day before, I learnt that he was cremated almost 30 years earlier. He died from AIDS at an early age; Marlene was his caregiver as he fought this losing battle, and she held him in her arms till his dying breath. She wrote of these years and of her grief in her book ‘Not a total waste: The True Story of a mother, Her Son, and Aids’, which was nominated for the governor general's award. Her recent agony with the burial agency would then sit heavier on my chest.

As she started walking away and waved goodbye, I tore the sheet from my drawing pad and asked her to keep it–the drawing of 134 Carlton Street. She knew a young lady who lived there and was excited to frame it for her as a wall-hanging for her apartment.

"Your first famous piece of art, my dear," she said, as she walked away, drawing in hand, and dog in tow.

Every time I pass 134 Carlton Street, I will think of Marlene, of her dog that I managed not to chastise, and of Gordon and how quickly he had to be taken from her. I will also think of the little frame with my little sketch—my first famous piece of art—hanging poetically within its focal point, a fall trinket.