Outliving Old Friends

An old woman creaked onto the bus and lowered herself carefully into the first row.  Halle sat a few rows back and wondered what it would be like when her first friend died of old age.  Unless, her mind wandered towards the idea, she would be the first.  She made herself long-lived and killed off her friend Nora at the age of 89, which she felt was pretty good.  You can't complain if you manage to hit 89.  Halle imagined herself mourning each of her friends, wearing black to their funerals, and being patted for her losses as everyone she knew dropped away into time.

Continuation of #324 from January 1, 2015

324

Sitting in the passenger seat of a car again was freaking me out.  After only being able to walk or maybe hitch a ride on the back of an animal-drawn cart, the speed at which the scenery was streaking by was alarming.  Without wanting to, I was clutching the "ohshit" handle and my legs were stiff in front of me.  The smell, too.  It reeked in here, though I know I reeked to Richard.  I smelled like animal, but the car smelled like chemicals and it burned my sensitized nose.

Posted by KarenLE at 10:59 AM 

Richard hovered around me all the way into the apartment, like I was a stray sheep and he was my concerned and knowing sheep dog.  He unlocked the door, but didn't open it.  "Cara, I..."  I don't know what he expected me to say, or what he wanted right then.  I wanted a shower.  I wanted to run.  I wanted to go home.  "I kept everything the same.  I knew you would be back."

Not for long.  God, please, not for long.

One year ago I went for my evening walk and got whistled at by a bunch of men I couldn't see who were drinking on a porch across a busy street.  I kept walking, my destination the woods and the gorge along the river that was one of the only truly natural parts of the city.  I risked stumbling into homeless people's camps and teenage drinkers, but it was usually quiet and I hardly ever saw anybody.  The city streets were more dangerous.

I always told Richard when I was going out.  I used to ask him to go for a walk, and I used to not walk if he said no, but I stopped doing that some months ago.  I think he would have walked if it had been his idea, but since it was mine, then, no.  I didn't know or care what he did after I left.  He didn't seem to care how long I was gone.  This particular walk, I would be gone for one year.

Richard locked the door behind him, and I started to hyperventilate.  "Cara, sit.  Are you okay?  Should I take you back to the hospital?"  I shook off his hands again, registered the hurt look, but I didn't care.  I fell to the edge of the sofa and leaned down to catch my breath.  Richard tried to give me water.  He hovered by the phone.  He asked if I wanted him to fill the sedative prescription, he would be right back.  I kept shaking my head no and staring at the cheap carpeting.  Richard had vacuumed, and he never vacuumed.  I hated that I knew, and I hated Richard for trying to help, and I hated that if I left, they'd drag me back to the hospital and, this time, they'd put me in the psych ward.

Where do you go when you don't want to be where you are?  When the ties that hold you become thinner and thinner and people start letting go?  Who would believe that I found a way out?  Temporary, though.  Temporal-ary.  My brain was split in two.

Doctors here.  Healers there.  Cars here.  Horses there.  Stripmalls here.  Peddlers there.  Television here.  Magic there.  Richard here.  Jacob there.  Me here.  Me there.

"Richard," saying his name made my teeth squirm, "I need some space."

I don't think it mattered what I had said, just that I said something to him because Richard looked more pleased than he should have.  "I'll go pick up your prescription, then.  You... have a shower?"

He didn't want to offend me.  I nearly laughed.  "Yes.  Fine.  I will.  Please."  Please go away, please leave me alone, please don't come back, please let me get out of here.  Except for the plan.  I had to prepare, and that meant staying for a while.

I showered and made myself a temporary plan.  I couldn't stay with Richard, but I had to stay nearby, so I would go home, if my parents would have me, their thirty year old married daughter, back in her childhood room, interrupting their retirement.  I needed to call them, anyway, since only Richard had spread the word I had been found, and I didn't get to talk to them myself.

I have to be honest; the shower felt damn good.  I soaped and scrubbed head to toe three times.  My hair was long and the quitters covered the drain.  I actually considered not shaving, since I hadn't in so long, but the urge to be smooth again was too strong now that I was surrounded by soaps and creams and scents.  All the fragrances in the tiny, steamy room were a little overpowering, and I promised myself to restock with unscented varieties.

What motivates you?

Pay attention to the weight of time.  The increase in weight is imperceptible at first, but it builds, and if you fail to notice, it will crush you.

A flutter of panic in the heart when the heart realizes its beats are finite.  The agonizing regret of misused moments that add up to hours, days, weeks, months, years that could have been used.  Pairing the crush of time with tired bones, fear of pain, and dread of failure makes each day less likely to be "the one" where it all changes for the better.

Motivation should have started when there was what seemed to be an eternity of time, but eternity breeds procrastination.  Wisdom would say that even now there is an eternity of time compared to the weight that will be added in another ten, twenty, or thirty years.  My age could double, and yet now it feels too late.

Fear crushes motivation.  Action crushes fear.  Doubt crushes action.  Doubt and fear build upon each other.  Action builds motivation.  Analysis: act.  Even if you're wrong, act.  Be wrong.  Be disappointed.  Be reprimanded.  Lose a job.  Lose your money.  Catch a cold.  Fight for change and be thwarted.  Whatever you do, though, ACT.  Be excited for the failure so you can banish the fear.  If success comes, be delighted, but delight in the disappointment, too.  Act to banish fear and doubt.  Act to boost motivation, and motivation will boost your action.  Time will lift from your heart and the ache will lift from your bones and you, in thirty years, will look back and you can say that every moment was used to its fullest.

Assuming that you one day become a parent, what one thing do you hope to teach your children?

I am shadowed by the ghost of my unconceived daughter.  She was never born, nor even a glimmering.  There was no opportunity, nor time enough, nor even retrospect opportunity.  She wasn't, except in my wishes for myself and for her.  Her name is Alaura.  She is my daughter who never was.  She missed all that I would teach her, and I missed all that she would give me.  My body is unchanged, except by time.  My legacy is mine and mine alone.  I will not create life to remember me.  I am only here to remember.  And I remember my daughter who never was.

364

The end of it all,
will there be burning
When the end finally comes,
will we still be here
At the end of me,
will you bear witness
At the end of you,
how can I ever be the same
All beginnings have an end,
or that is what we see
It's a limitation of humankind
to follow time only so far
The end of it all,
is it illusion
Or is end just the beginning
and we will meet again.

(Sorry about this being poetry, but I gotta go with the flow of whatever happens.  Only one more "Once Upon a Time" left!)

324

Sitting in the passenger seat of a car again was freaking me out.  After only being able to walk or maybe hitch a ride on the back of an animal-drawn cart, the speed at which the scenery was streaking by was alarming.  Without wanting to, I was clutching the "ohshit" handle and my legs were stiff in front of me.  The smell, too.  It reeked in here, though I know I reeked to the driver.  I smelled like animal, but the car smelled like chemicals and it burned my sensitized nose.

305

They say you can never go home again, and I never believed them.  I thought you couldn't go home only when the place had been plowed under, like my place eventually was, but I couldn't go home a long time before that.  Home had changed.  Okay, I suppose I had, too, but not as much as home had.  I wanted the avocado green carpets.  I wanted the harvest gold appliances.  I wanted the nubby black sofa with the square arms and the squashy throw pillows.  I wanted it to smell like dog.  I wanted the rotary phone to ring and ring and ring.  I wanted it to be the home I remembered, but it wasn't.  It changed, but I wanted it to be the same.

255

The end comes too fast, no matter how long it takes.  Life takes far longer than anyone imagines, and days flit by like a calendar in a breeze.  Marjoram was feeling the passage of time and anxiousness bubbled up inside of her.  It was always at the worst moments, Marjie felt, that she decided her life was being wasted.  At this moment, it was being wasted in a conference room on the sixth floor of an office building in a city that needed so much work it made Marjie cry when she thought too hard about it.  The desire to be out of the room, out of the building, out into the street to even just pick up garbage was threatening to overwhelm her.  A polite cough to her right nearly made her yelp, but her fellow worker only pursed her lips in a smile and gave a glance to Marjoram's bouncing leg.  Marjie played the dance, smiled and apologized in a mutter, though in her head she swore at the lady.

234

Nobody should have to witness 6:00 in the morning.  I despised 6:00 in the morning.  It was dark.  It was cold.  I was always tired.  While nobody has ever given me a good enough reason for me to be up, I'd get up anyway like a good little boy.  "But Neil," my mother would say, "school is important."  If it was so important, they'd start it later when we were all more well-rested.

161

Cara was living inside of time, right down to the moment, which is much smaller than even a single second.  Most people live in tomorrows though that is an impossible illusion.  Cara preferred living right in the dirt.  In the dirt under her nails.  In the smudges in her fingerprint whorls.  In the molecules that were absorbed into her cells.

116

Crisscrossing metal spikes covered the field for as far as the eye could see. They menaced, conveyed danger, shouted to all "Keep Out!" Those who buried those spikes should have imagined the decades of decades that would pass, but they didn't. They underestimated the effect of weather and flora. The ten inch diameter spikes eventually bent, fell, were torn apart by the relentlessness of time. Eventually, the seemingly endless field seemed like just another field. The carefully crafted warning decayed while the threat, under the soil, still threatened.

31

The old cobblestone house had fallen into disrepair somewhere between forty and fifty years ago. Without a swift and vast investment of money, the house would cease to be quaint and suddenly become a pile of stones at which people would shake their heads and say, "That is such a shame."

That is, if people ever saw it at all. The house was surrounded by overgrown bushes and self-seeded trees in what used to be a spacious, well-tended yard. The driveway was long and winding but was now nearly indistinguishable from the thick woods that surrounded it. The driveway ended at a gravel road, neatly kept by the town because it lead to an important cell tower eventually connecting to a better road, which connected to a yet better road, and so on until you hit the thruway ramps a few miles and one small town later.

No one could see the little cobblestone house to notice that it still had tatters of curtains in the windows. There was no one who might have seen the curtains to come up and peer through the glass to see that the house remained completely furnished as it was more than sixty years ago.

7

Sweeping away as far as the eye could see were Forget-Me-Nots. No grass, no other splashes of color in the purplish-blue and green, just Forget-Me-Nots. They swayed in the warm, gentle breeze, turning their faces to the golden late afternoon sun. In the fall they would dry and shed their seeds in the stronger, colder winds, spreading their delicate beauty to even further distances. Up and down the hills, to the edge of a stream, pausing only for the flowing water, continuing up the other bank and on and on and on.

They continued the way human memory couldn’t, replicating exactly and blooming year after year without change, only becoming more deeply entrenched. The tiny flowers never knew the reason for their planting, but they marked it all the same. They mutely marked a memory so powerful and so important it had spilled over into action uncountable years ago. But just as human memory faded, humans themselves faded, leaving only this sea of desire for a memory lost to time.

4

Nora slowed as she neared the house, wishing the fan belt didn’t squeak at low speeds, but there was no need for silence; his truck was gone.

She killed the engine and fumbled for the house key, hurrying for the back door. He was gone, but she didn’t want to bank on how long. She sprinted up to the bedroom and flung wide the closet doors. One small carry-on suitcase, one backpack. Another pair of jeans, a few shirts, her two favorite sweaters, pajamas, random underwear, socks, toiletries, pillow, and her stuffed bear Beau who had always, always been with her.

He had once accused her of loving that stuffed bear more than him.

“Yeah, well, I’ve known him longer,” she said smiling. But he hadn’t smiled back. He really was jealous. And time was still ticking.

Underneath, she must have known for months, maybe years, that she’d have to leave in a hurry. She had a stash of about a thousand in squirreled away tens and twenties, her passport, the title to her car, and some bonds all in the back of her desk drawer. Her most precious notebooks and sketchbooks would fit in her backpack, but she’d have to hope the rest of her stuff could be gotten later, after the divorce papers were filed. She was out of time.