Dovetail

by Karen McQuestion

We don’t actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace. —T. S. Eliot

Purpose - The idea that being here made a difference to someone.

If you saw me in public, picking up prescriptions at the drugstore or sitting in the waiting room at one of my many doctors’ appointments, you wouldn’t give me a second glance. If you thought about me at all, you might think I looked like a nice white-haired grandma. Or, if you’re a mean-spirited type, you’d peg me as a broken-down old hag, one who’d lived a bit too long. One foot in the grave. And you wouldn’t be wrong either way.

Sounds like me right now. I never was a looker though.

existing. I understand that and will not be offended if you’re wondering why God takes youngsters and leaves old-timers like me behind. I have often wondered the same thing myself. My body has long since worn out, held together now by spit and baling wire, my bones creaky, my joints complaining with every move.

I've wonder this many times myself.

Sometimes she couldn’t believe how the years had ravaged her. She stared in the mirror in the morning, wondering how in the world she’d gotten so old. Luckily, nature had chipped away at her eyesight while simultaneously stealing her former beauty, the only blessing in the whole process.

I have often wondered how I had gotten so old myself, with a lifetime of depression and breakdowns.

“Since your condition hasn’t responded to medication, he thinks you’d be an excellent candidate for electroconvulsive therapy. They’ve had terrific results on patients who—” “Stop right there,” Joe said. “Electroshock therapy? No, no way. Not happening. Absolutely not.”

This idea became a real possibility with depression and breakdowns. I was surprised when I realized they still used this method.

All of us have limited time. I’m ancient and have a terminal case of cancer. You’re young and healthy. And guess what? You could get hit by a truck tomorrow, and I could live another three years. We aren’t guaranteed even one more minute. Babies die, and so do young people. No one knows who’s next. It’s very unfair.”

Kind of like spinng a roulet wheel and waiting for it to land. But we are not the ones who spin the wheel of our own lives.

Joe leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “What was the mistake?” Pearl paused for only a second. She was getting too old to sugarcoat things, so she just came out with it. “Your father believes that I killed someone.” The statement clearly took him by surprise. Joe appeared dumbstruck for a moment, and then he asked, “Did you?” “Not on purpose.”

This is why family secrets stay hidden. But with the march of time they can produce and infection that needs laid open and healed.

Alice had worked up a sweat cooking all day in a hot kitchen, and in no time at all, the food would be eaten and there’d be dishes to do. Cooking was the work that created more work, and for what? The next meal would come around soon enough, and it would start all over again. Pearl

Family dynamics put each person where they work so hard to become.

I’ve long believed that no one should be judged on the worst thing they’ve ever done. And not on the best thing either, for that matter.” She sighed. “Human beings are much more complex than one event that happened on one day in a very long life.”

Watching the ruin of celebrities on film made me sure I would not want my worst moments to be right out there where everyone could see, even God.

All of life was change, ongoing, never ceasing. Babies were born and grew up, seemingly overnight. And then, in the blink of an eye, those babies were married grown-ups announcing that they were expecting babies of their own. No one had warned her how fast it all would go.

I know the feeling. I'm 70 years old. Quite hard to believe. Something feels wrong about that.

She felt the shame of the truth about Ricky and their marriage, the ugliness that emerged out of what had been, she’d thought, real love. But it hadn’t been real love at all, just the illusion of love. She’d not been a good judge of who he was and what they were together, and so it felt like a failure on her part, although logically she knew that wasn’t true. “We all have something in our past that we’re not eager for people to know,” she finally said, drawing the words out. “For instance, no one in Pullman knows I’m divorced.”

Knowing the true nature of a "love" interest can be hard to see through the false realities of the outside persona. And if you don't know yourself, it's even harder.

Exhausting was what it was. The longer she lived with him, the more turned around she became until she didn’t know what to think anymore. The truth of it was that she had just apologized to restore the peace. So he was right about that, which clouded things in her mind. By the time she left, she wasn’t sure who she was anymore. It took the divorce and moving away to make

You can reach the point when you are "ashamed" of who you both have become.

Then he remembered the dream he’d named the Owl Dream. In the dream, he was the one who’d put the metal box in the hollow of the tree. It was both a dream and a memory. He’d put the box in that spot decades ago, before he, Joe, was even born, and there it had sat until just now. The idea boggled his mind. He was halfway to the house when he remembered the key Kathleen had found in the hope chest.

The dreams Joe has been happening are bringing Joe back to family relationships and past history.