A Life Well Written

The gleaning gray van, with its standard quo of lifts and wider doors, squeaked to a stern stop. The driver, with his shadowed cheeks and his slopping hand skin, threw up his hand. “Green Gardens, folks! Welcome home!”. And before the driver could throw the red switch to open a wide, wide door, the snappy and pesky nurses pranced before them all. And like royalty, they were all helped, one by one, down the lift of the grey van, now reeking of fear and possible regret, smattered with anger. Because when you’re put somewhere you don’t wanna be, you revolt. And so she did.

Elizabeth Carol Myers revolted loudly to her entire family. Right after Christmas, after her second fall, she knew. Her walker wasn’t enough and it wasn’t long before she was gingerly being escorted to this new…home. She thought back to her childhood home, maybe. Or maybe this was her aunt’s house? Did she just leave the ice cream shop with Barbara?

One by one, they were all led, half with the look of discernment and half with the look of eager anxiety. And once they entered the too-small foyer of the Green Garden Home for Seniors, specializing in Alzheimer’s and dementia, they were led, one by one in one neat line, down the sterile corridor of expansive width. The ringing of phones echoed and reflected the fluorescent lighting above and then they stopped.

“Okay! When I call your name, please raise your hand and your nurse attendant will assist you with your move-in! And I’d like to say, Welcome Home. Truly. We know how scary this can be, it’s a big change. We get that and if there’s anything you need or anything we can do for you to make this transition easier, please just ask. We are here for you and we are excited about getting to know all of you.” The nurse’s bright eyes met Elizabeth’s green ones. They locked on each other.

The names were echoed off the halls in quick succession and before Elizabeth had noticed the thinned out crowd of her fellow seniors, she saw the head nurse curiously walking toward her. To Elizabeth, the nurse looked familiar. Like her grand daughter. She was young enough. She was too tall, somewhere inside Elizabeth knew that. And yet, she couldn’t make sense of it, she couldn’t place it where it belonged.

So when headlights hit her blue eyes in the glowing hours just before dawn, Elizabeth was more confused. She kept walking toward her brother’s house. And when she didn’t find it she started walking home. Only, Elizabeth walked right into oncoming traffic and the hood of the college-fat boy two door sedan who happened to be delivering pizzas for Pete’s Kitchen, the hood dented where her head had landed. She didn’t remember it. She only knew that when she woke up her legs didn’t work anymore and she burst out with tears and screams because that, she understood.

The nurse walked behind Elizabeth’s chair and then she tugged the brake up. Friction, releasing, rubbed and squealed as they took off to Elizabeth’s new future. The one she wouldn't remember.

“That comforter is beautiful!” Elizabeth’s nurse exclaimed in awe when she laid out the quilt Elizabeth’s great-grandmother had quilted for her during World War Two. Tattered rags and old socks, the un-used portions of patches for holes and sewing of overalls, Elizabeth’s quilt was beautiful. Elizabeth knew that.

The window faced the mountains that reminded Elizabeth of Colorado. Another future filled with average things. But she knew where she was, right now. A part of her understood. Then her heart sort of imploded, but slowly, as the months rolled by.

The steam from Elizabeth’s small coffee mug, filled with empty calories because her nurse had told her was starting to lose too much weight, kept her aging hands from aching in the morning, Drifts, floating by the half-fogged window, slowly sinking. Her nurse had knocked and Elizabeth didn’t bother to answer.

“Good morning, Miss Elizabeth! How we doin?” That fucking smile. Irritation faded to slender indifference and Elizabeth smiled back.

“Okay, Jenny. How are you this morning?” Some days, Elizabeth knew her nurse’s name was not, in fact, Jenny. And sometimes, on those days, Elizabeth would call her Jenny anyway because her freedom was left stranded in the middle of that road.

“Miss, Elizabeth! See that board over there, the one we put by your mirror so you would read it every morning?” Not-Jenny bent down to meet Elizabeth’s ears. A frolicking moist breath fanned past Elizabeth’s ear and her neck quivered in agitation. She was hard of hearing, sure. But this seemed a little much.

“So we can put your hearing aids in? And so you know who your nurse is for the day?” Not-Jenny skipped the silence that would have been smashed in between the words she clamored out next, “My name is Ashley, and I’ll be your nurse attendant for the day! See? There!” Ashley pointed to the board.

“Yeah. Okay. Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked and Ashley chuckled. “Well, nowhere. I was just gonna turn you…” Ashley pulled and pushed and squiggled Elizabeth’s wheelchair until she pushed the brakes on and stood in front of Elizabeth,”…So you can see what I found.”

“What you found? What do you mean?”

“This…” Ashley held a tightly wound, typed hand-made book. White pages throughout, no cover. No back. Turned creamy and crusty from years of corrosion inside that box with her dead brother’s stuff in Barbara’s attic. When Barbara, Elizabeth’s older sister, found it, she had no bother with it. She threw it inside the box with Max’s things because Max was gone now, Barbara had kept telling herself. Elizabeth stirs into that memory, sometimes. And she doesn’t question the picture it paints. The story it tells. And then, when Barbara died, the Myers family sold the estate as is, everything inside. The Myers family walked away from Elizabeth after Barbara died. The Myers family wanted nothing to do with her, not anymore. Not after she left the church. “This is yours.”

Ashley handed Elizabeth the hand-threaded book. Elizabeth stared down at it, a flutter of words mashed together that had her name in there, on the bottom, right after Written By dot dot.

“What…what is this?” Elizabeth lifted it up, conversed with it a little and looked to Ashley to ask the questions. “What is this? What is this?” She wasn’t upset about the book with her name, only that she had no idea what it was, where it came from. Why it’s here.

“Okay, okay. I’m explaining it. Listen…Okay?” Ashley was calm and gentle when they looked at each other. Elizabeth’s agitation descending into curiosity.

“This is, I think, a book about your life. Like, your own life. And, I think you wrote it.”

“How did it get here?” So Ashley explained how Elizabeth’s book was left abandoned at the inside the creaking attic, where it was bought by a nice family who loves books. Then Ashley explained, as simply as she could, that the family tracked Elizabeth down so she could have, what they thought, was her original manuscript when they started turning the creaking attic into a library.

Elizabeth’s lips swelled when the tears came and the salt of it all burned all the way down her neckline. Swirls started to float by, like snowflakes. The smallest flakes of memories, brought forward, pushed back, they came and then expired. Elizabeth felt this happen, over and over again as she listened to Ashley recount the life she’d never remember.

And like small careening snowflakes, her memories, her life, expired. Floating, swirling.

Then, poof.

All at once she was gone and then she arrived.