I’m old and haggard. I am surrounded by the joys of life and
the mourning of death.
My wrinkles show my age and the horrors that I’ve had to see
in this life. I have had to live through war, running for shelter when hearing
the piercing sound of an air raid siren, not knowing if my friends will still
be alive the next day.
I have had to experience the terrifying feeling of being
suicidal when fighting bipolar, waking up in my bed the next day, surprised that
I managed to stop myself but upset that I woke up at all.
As well as seeing the many die from war I have had to watch
my loved ones die, my friends, my family, my parents. I have had to watch my
husband die due to a cruel malfunction in his cells, preventing me from growing
old with him.
Loneliness is like a cancer attached to life, slowly
leaching the happiness that you once had.
The realisation of becoming a widow was enough, let alone
having to bring up three teenage children, but my children are my life, and
they are what I have to show for it all.
Nothing could have made me happier to then be presented with
three grandchildren through the years, so innocent and fragile yet strong
willed and born for a better life than I’d lived. However loneliness slowly
crept up on me again, like a disease or a demon haunting me until the end. My
children no longer wanted to see me and my grandchildren grew up.
But now I lay here, connected to a drip, unable to move and
the only thing that will come out of my mouth is an excruciating groan.
My granddaughter told me that she loved me on my birthday,
the first time in years. In the same day my beloved baby boy made it clear that
he didn’t. For both of those reasons my dry eyes produced a tear that were
worth a thousand tears that I refused to make in the past.
After that I had to go to a wretched ‘old peoples home’. I’ve
lived in my home for all of my life and my parents did before me.
If that wasn’t enough to make me feel like a cast out puppy,
it was just after my birthday, which is just before Christmas. The staff were
nice to me at Christmas, which made a change, and the roast dinner was good, so
I guess I shouldn’t complain.
I am no longer a burden, having to be taken care of by my
daughter and her children. The only family that I got to see every day. My poor
daughter couldn’t take it anymore, and because of that I went willingly, but I
would have rather died in my own bed.
My family came to see me today, my grandchildren and my
daughter, they all seemed so happy to see me but I could see in their eyes what
they were really thinking. My granddaughter stood at the foot of my bed staring
at me with realisation in her face that I won’t be coming back home.
The doctors say that they don’t know what’s wrong with me,
but I think my family and I know perfectly well what is wrong, I’ve given up.
My family all said goodbye to me when they left, only
meaning it as a temporary one I know, because they thought that they’d come
back to see me again, but I took that loving goodbye as my last.
I can die now.
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