She wanted to say something, the truth preferably, but all her words stuck in her mouth, hung up on her tongue, forever secured and tethered to going nowhere.
She watched them fumble with their own words, trying to console and support without really talking about what was happening. She didn’t want to talk about it either—too much to say and too few ways to say it.
She smiled when they did but wished they’d stop looking at her, watching her, waiting for her to do something. What that something was, she couldn’t remember.
She couldn’t remember most things, it seemed. She could tell when their faces lost her train of thought, though. They would exchange glances and try to start where she’d left off, but she knew something was wrong.
Something was missing as if a large hand snuck in and plucked her favorite flower—its brilliance, its light, its tantalizing aroma—and she was without it for eternity. The loss of it filled her with dread and raced her heart.
She knew there was no going back.
There was no standing up and walking again. There was no moment without pain or discomfort. There was no recalling of things just passed. There was no more baking cakes or roasting pork shoulders for birthday dinners. There was no more going out for lunch or trips to wherever and whenever.
There was no going back to how it used to be when her body worked . . . when she was free to live as she desired.
There was only waiting. Waiting for time to pass, to inch down to the moment she would die, say goodbye to this world and the people she loved. She despised that truth, didn’t wish to wait for it, and, yet, that’s all there was.
But the moments in between, those seconds of breath where everything looked as it used to when she could linger in the old life of what had been, there was love and laughter.
There was a reprieve from the inevitable, moments to collect and forge into monuments of shared experience. Those pieces would live for as long as they were remembered, and, maybe, they would survive longer than what was recalled . . . always twining their existence around time’s ankles.
***
Image Source: Pixabay
Weathered Well 