Reggie looks at me. I nod, and he shifts forward on his banana seat, motioning for Annie to climb on. She does, and we continue home, taking our strays with us.
One Last Story
Iam out of stories, and so it is time to write my own final scene. NotbecauseI am out of stories; that is but a subplot in the tale. If my life is a book, then I have reached the beginning of the final sequence, and as an author, I must know where that lies and resist the temptation to drag out the looming conclusion. The tale is told. The end is nigh. I must have the strength to pen “The End.” But not quite yet, because I am not a writer of quiet stories. My plots end with a bang and a twist, and that is how I will conclude my own. With a mystery to be solved. One elderly writer, alone in her cabin in the woods, about to be the victim of a whodunit guaranteed to hit the headlines…and provide one final boost to her book sales, a life insurance policy that will pay out for years to come.
I am old. Let us not mince words. Richard never did.
“We’re old, Marguerite,” he’d say, and I’d smile, look up into the stars and say, “Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” and we’d both laugh.
Certainly, in many ways, growing old isnotwonderful. One will never feel the same at eighty as one did at twenty, or even fifty, but we did our best to keep our bodies and minds tuned and, if not exactly purring, at least chugging along. Personal trainers, healthy eating, university classes, mental puzzles, allthe little extras that might, if we were lucky, allow us to enjoy our old age.
Enjoy it we did. We walked the Great Wall. Backpacked through Switzerland. Played softball with our grandchildren. Danced with our toddling great-grandchildren. Hiked and kayaked at our remote “cabin in the woods.” Yes, we werethoseseniors, and we worked our asses off to be those seniors, and we loved every minute of it.
Then came the trip nearly two years ago. We escaped the snow of early December to return just in time for Christmas, and Richard brought back a cough. Nothing serious, the doctors said. Just a bug picked up overseas. Two days before Christmas, he was admitted to the hospital in respiratory distress. Christmas Day, they put him on a ventilator. He didn’t live to see the New Year.
The world soon had a name for what killed him and others, and within three months, that world shut down with a global pandemic. If it hadn’t been for that pandemic, I might have given up then, adrift without Richard. But I couldn’t quit then because my family needed me. I was the matriarch. Or, as Richard said, “the chick in charge.” It was up to me to keep things together when they fell apart. When my sister died of the virus. When my brother spent weeks in the hospital with it. When half my grandchildren found themselves alone in an apartment, cut off from the world. When my children struggled with working from home and not seeingtheirchildren and grandchildren. I rallied the troops. I played cheerleader and therapist and Mom and Gran, and I loved it. Hours on Zoom calls and group chats and text strings. It didn’t matter if I’d lost my stories when Richard died. I had apurpose.
Then the world slowly righted itself. I got to see my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and that was glorious. Backyard BBQs. Picnics in the park. Hikes onevery trail we could find. Two weeks taking over an entire small wilderness resort. But as the righting continued, everyone got back to their lives, and after a brief period of pride and satisfaction in seeing that, I stepped back, ready to resume my own life and…
And it was not there.
Richard was gone. My stories were gone. My sister was gone. My friends were either dead or debilitated or—rightfully—afraid to resume a normal social life.
Then my dog died, and it was the proverbial straw that broke my back. Broke my will.
I have had—and lost—many dogs in my life. Richard and I always joked that other people measure their lives in dog years, and we measured ours in dogs. We got our first on the day we returned from our honeymoon. When she passed, we grieved for a year and then got another puppy. And so it continued. There was always a dog in our lives.
Before we got Dolly, we did pause, wondering whether it was unfair to get a puppy that might outlive us. We’d recently turned seventy, and it was time to start thinking about such things. Our children insisted that if anything should happen to us, they would happily take her. They knew how much we loved our dogs, and so they clambered to assure us all would be fine.
Now Dolly is gone. She’d been my only companion for most of the pandemic, and I’ve never been more attached to a dog. She’d been my reason to keep exercising, giving her endless walks. She’d patiently listened to the explosions of worries and grief I didn’t dare inflict on my already suffering family. When I couldn’t hug anyone else, I had Dolly, eagerly lapping up the attention and the tears.
She started losing weight two months ago, and I got her into the vet’s right away. They gave me a slim hope of survival with her cancer diagnosis, but I paid whatever needed to be paid,right up until I had to admit I was keeping her alive for me. Making her suffer for me.
I had planned this trip for us. We’d go to the cabin for the first time since the pandemic. The first time since Richard passed. Everything was sorted at home, no one needed me, and so the two of us would hole up in the cabin for a month, as I tried to find a new story. A new story to write. A new story to live.
Without Dolly, it fell apart. I fell apart. I don’t want a new story. I just want to end this one. Bring it to a satisfying conclusion, with a twist and a payoff.
Before I turn off the secondary highway, I take out my phone to send a last group text to my family. I open my phone to a string of individual messages, everything from my youngest son fretting about me going “off-grid” at my age, to my oldest daughter passing over me a handful of writing prompts, to three of my grandkids sending me puppy pictures, trying to coax me into a “new Dolly.”
I answer all of those. Then I send the group one. It is simple and unsentimental. The more personal ones came a few months ago, when a common cold put me into a panic, sending personal messages to each of my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, telling them what I loved most about them. This message is different.
“Heading into the wild! Will pop out for groceries and an update next Tuesday. Love you all. XOXOXO. Hope you have a great week!”
I hit send, and then I turn off my phone and turn onto the road that will lead me to the end.
Gettingto the cabin requires a long and treacherous drive, up and down mountain roads, around hairpin curves, all of it on washboard dirt roads. I turn that final corner, and spot a tennis ball on the drive.
“Ah-ha!” I say. “That’s where you left your ball, Dolly. It’s…”
I glance in the rear-view mirror, expecting to see the dog at my shoulder, watching out the windshield, her gaze scanning for red squirrels and spruce grouse. I expect to hear Richard grumbling good-naturedly about how the dog is as bad as our kids, moping for weeks because “we” left her favorite toy behind when she’d been the one who lost it.
There is no Dolly. There is no Richard. There is just a ratty yellow tennis ball in the middle of the lane. I still pull over. I still pick it up. I hold it, squish it, then pull back my arm, throw it and yell “Go!” Then I cry. I stand on the driveway, and I cry.
When something moves in the trees, I spin, hand rising, key between my fingers. I snort at that. I’ve been in the city too long if I think a key will protect me from anything out here.
I whistle, and listen for the scuffle of something small fleeing or the shuffle of something larger ambling away, wanting me to know it’s not frightened—it just doesn’t feel like eating me today.
When no such sound comes, I frown into the surrounding forest. Either I was hearing things or whatever it was got away too quietly for my hearing aid to pick up. Richard and I spared no expense on our “senior” needs. I’d rather have a top-quality knee brace than a pair of designer heels. It’s not like I canweardesigner heels anymore…or have anyplace to wear them. But if there’s one joy of turning eighty, it’s that people arejust astounded to see you still up and about, and they pay no attention to your shoes or anything else you’re wearing.
