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Me, I’m more about looking back, especially now there’s so much back and so little forward left. What’s wrong with spending your last few years in quiet contemplation? It’s too late to change the world, isn’t it?
There will always be tough years in a marriage this long. It’s guaranteed. The best you can hope is you have someone who cares enough to weather them with you.
Why do we wait until people are dead to talk about how we felt?
Every generation has their own struggles, their own hardships. We didn’t have much back then, materially speaking, but there was a lot less to worry about, too. The world wasn’t complicated the way it is now. But I don’t have the words for all this, so I don’t say anything.
‘It is that. Do you remember it, Mabel? All the emotions. God, I don’t miss being young.’ I do. I remember it, but unlike Julie, I do miss it. The way my body moved however and wherever I wanted it to, the way I felt like there was more life ahead than behind, the way people noticed me.
Because the death of the person you spent your whole life with is one thing, but the death of the person you didn’t? Sometimes, that’s the real tragedy.
Because here I am now, an old woman, a widow, and what have I got to show for my life? A marriage that was long and contained love but no passion, an old friendship that I lost and some new friendships that mean a great deal. Is it enough? If I don’t have long left, have I done and said enough?
The price of living a long life, I think, is the sheer weight of the losses you have to suffer. You carry each loved one you lose, and they stack up, and it becomes unbearable. I tick them off in my mind. Brother, father, mother, husband, and my friend, my love.
This one took the wind right out of me. It stays with me. It's real.
Because the things I need aren’t material, and no one can give them to me. A second chance. A rewinding of time. The girl I was, and the girl she was, and the hidden love that may have existed between us.
‘I think we’re all grieving for something. Our childhoods or a relationship or a dream.’
