Too Old for This

by Samantha Downing

The house is much bigger than I need and requires too much maintenance. It’s old and more than I can handle, which is why it looks the way it does. We match, me and this house, though it’s important to note that I’m the younger one.

It’s impossible to keep up with advances today. If I take a nap, I miss some new technological advance. And I love my naps.

You can’t live and not have regrets. Some call them life lessons and try to figure out what they’ve learned from each experience. That’s well and good, but you’ll always wish you hadn’t done it in the first place.

Sometimes I say things just to make myself laugh on the inside.

For most of my life, I worked at a bank. First as a teller, then as a personal account manager. Never got promoted beyond that, because I didn’t go to college.

“I almost forgot.” I dig into one of my bags and take out a large cookie tin. “I used my fireplace over the weekend. I brought you some ashes for your lawn.”

It feels good to get out of that nightgown and slip into a hot bath. A rarity for me. Who has time to lie around in a pool of water filled with their own dirt?

I had to be in the mood. Next, the opportunity had to present itself. The place, the time, who was around and who wasn’t. It all had to work. But the most important thing was the anger. I had to be very, very angry.

I’m too old for all that. Panic is bad for my heart.

Imagine going through life constantly afraid of losing your husband. It made her look uglier than she was.

This evening feels so normal, just another night at church, that I’ve almost stopped myself from wondering if it’s one of my last.

My preference for this weapon came from Debbie. I never knew anything about tools or hammers or how many kinds there were until she taught me. Debbie is one of the few people who has a spot on my list of life milestones.

He got the message and left a few minutes later. Didn’t buy anything, either, so I knew he was up to no good.” Debbie sighed and looked out the window. “And you know how I felt? Lucky.” “Lucky?” “Isn’t that horrible?” she said. “To feel lucky no one attacked you?”

This is a slow, agonizing surrender. I am getting too old, and too weak, to live the life I want.

This cane isn’t for show. It really does help, and it has for a long time, but I’ve avoided using it in public. My pain was a weakness I never wanted to show.

I didn’t just feel relieved. I felt lucky. Burke had tried to trick me into saying something, and thank God he’d made a mistake. If he hadn’t, it might have worked.

Do I want to die alone in my house, with my body decomposing until someone finds me? Like the hip surgery, this is yet another decision I don’t want to make. Old age is full of them.

Yes, people put their interests ahead of others’, even in times of tragedy. Accident, illness, missing child—it doesn’t matter. Self-interest always takes precedence. The people who are supposed to help, who get paid to help, will still choose themselves.

Sheila and Bonnie see their future in me. They see their own fears about physical and mental decline, and they don’t like the reflection in the mirror. I’m not the only one who might end up rotting alone in my house.

I chose to keep my mouth shut. And to make myself feel bad, instead of Archie.

That’s the thing about anger. It doesn’t just sit around, doing nothing inside of you. Anger has to go somewhere. Some people probably think my method is crazy. I think it’s crazy there aren’t more people like me.

The other half of me is tired. Ready to stop fighting, ready to stop trying, ready to stop everything. It takes so much energy to be scared. I don’t have enough anymore.

Chances are I will end up a name on a family tree or the old woman in a picture that no one recognizes. You can leave behind a business, a nonprofit, an invention, even a forest of trees that you planted, and people still may not remember you at all.

People say they want the truth, and they believe they want it. But it’s a lie. Nine times out of ten, if you know what’s good for you, the last thing you want is the truth. What you want, what we all want, is the story we believe in. And it’s probably a lie.