AGING:  does it have to be depressing?
The following short story was a hit at my writers group last night:

TIME, REMEMBERED AND FORGOTTEN

Abel Arnett celebrated his 82^nd birthday alone.  He wanted it that way. He made a wish before blowing out the single candle on the chocolate cupcake he’d bought at the Stop N Shop.  His wish was to die, and die soon, so he could be with his now-dead wife Sarah. He simply couldn’t stand to go on, deteriorating in body and mind in the house they had shared for more than fifty years.  It had been seven months, yet he could still feel her, still smell her perfume.  He hadn’t changed a thing in the house, but everything had changed. 

He missed so much about her. He missed the evenings when they would walk through the neighborhood holding hands.  He missed how she would sing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” while folding laundry or washing the dishes. He missed talking about politics with her; Sarah would listen to him rant about Nixon even long after the disgraced president had died.  Sarah was kind and patient. Abel needed that.

They never had kids.  Something in the plumbing didn’t work, but they never looked into it.  They never discussed it.  They just lived their life. When he retired from the insurance company, she talked about taking a trip to China.  He didn’t want to go to China, but he let her talk. She talked about moving to Florida.  He let her talk. 

She died suddenly.  Abel found her on the kitchen floor.  In shock, he fell and hit his head on the counter and didn’t notice the gash until the blood flooded his eyes.  He dialed 911 and the EMTs bandaged up his head and took him to the hospital for evaluation.  The kindly woman doctor who treated him in the ER approached the topic of assisted living but Abel wouldn’t hear of it. He did his best to assure her he was well enough to return home.  The doctor told him he was going to need help, and he promised he would get someone.

As soon as the doorbell rang on the day he expected his first visit from a caregiver, he almost didn’t answer it.  Standing on the front porch was a woman who smiled brightly and told him “I’m Helen, your visiting angel!”

Abel said, “I’ve changed my mind.  Don’t need you.” As he tried to close the door in her face, but Helen stopped that with one determined orthopedic shoe.  “Please, Mr. Arnett, just let me in for a moment and give me a chance to tell you how I can help.”

“Can you bring Sarah back?” he growled, looking at her as though he really expected her to answer.

Helen winked at him.  “I can try.”

Over the next months, Helen came four days a week to help Abel with household duties, medications, and preparing meals.  Abel accepted her help, but rarely spoke to her beyond monosyllabic grunts.  Most of the time he ignored her as she would prattle on and on about her life, how she grew up locally, went away to nursing school, then returned to New York and married, divorced and remarried.  Abel didn’t listen. If he had, he would have known something that even Helen hadn’t yet realized, a connection between them that would change his life.

His birthday was a day when Helen was supposed to come, but she cancelled the day before for a vague reason.  It was six p.m. when he finished his dinner and his cupcake and just as he was about to sit down to watch the Yankees game, the doorbell rang.  Annoyed, Abel trudged to the door.

Helen stood there holding a bouquet of colorful balloons.  Next to her was a short  elderly lady.  “Happy birthday!” they said together, then sang the song off key.  Abel noted that the white-haired lady had a big smile and still had all her teeth.

 “Abel, this is my mom, Millie.” said Helen, pushing Millie into the house.  “I think you’ve met before!”  She tied the balloons to a chair.

Millie gently touched Abel’s hand.  “Abel Arnett!  Abel! It’s been years!”

Abel stared at her, then he remembered.  “Millie?  Coney Island Millie? Is it you?”

She giggled.  “It’s me.”

The fog of so many years fell away.  Abel now clearly remembered a girl with freckles and dimples and soft hands.  The smell of popcorn and the sound of calliope music and the roar and shrieks from the roller coaster.  A sunny day at Coney Island.  The sea breeze messing her auburn hair. It was only a first date, but he envisioned a future with this beautiful girl.

But the gods did not cooperate.  He had been drafted and was to be shipped off to Europe.  He expected to die in the war.  It would not be permissible or acceptable for him to propose or even kiss her.  And so, he went away and Millie disappeared from his life.  

He was one of the lucky ones.  He never saw combat.  He was still in training in Dover when the war ended.  He was off duty reveling with the crowd of Brits in Trafalgar Square in London.   Like everyone that day, he was overcome with joy and relief, and when he noticed an attractive girl in a plaid coat standing next to him holding a faded British Union Jack, he impulsively kissed her.  They laughed, kissed again, and jumped in the fountain with others gone wild.  It was that kind of day.

He returned to the states with his war bride, Sarah.  

And now, Millie stood before him. Without knowing it, the widowed mother Helen had been prattling about for months was his Millie from 1945.  Now he saw that Helen had her mother’s dimples.

For the next several weeks, Helen would bring her mother every time she came to do her Angel duties.  Millie and Abel would sit on the porch or in the TV room.  Millie didn’t talk much, but she listened.  She hated Nixon too.  It seemed they could actually recapture the magic of Coney Island so long ago. 

As long as they didn’t look in any mirrors. 

After a few months, Abel asked her to marry him, but Millie didn’t want to get married, saying ,”I’ve done that already.”  It didn’t seem right to Abel to live together in sin, but it was what she wanted and he wanted her to be happy.  So he sold the house he’d shared with Sarah, and they rented a nice apartment together.

He still missed Sarah every day, but he no longer wished to die.  He felt lucky to have found love twice in his life.  He was amazed that he and Millie found ways to be intimate with their old bodies that was energizing and joyful.   He was convinced it was right and meant to be one day while they were in their sitting room.   He was reading the newspaper and she was knitting a hat for a friend who was going through chemo.

  He looked up and watched her pale fingers moving her needles.  He smiled with comfort and contentment.  And then he realized that she was absentmindedly humming a  familiar song.  Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.”