Amber Trent sits in her chair and focuses on the garden. The wind of earlier has died away and the birds, sated on seeds are elsewhere. All is still and silent.
Amber Trent doesn’t move. She is replete, pain free and alert. Today her son Patrick will visit. His son will marry next year, he has told Amber and he will, she is sure tell her of the latest plans.
Amber Trent knows the other residents will be having tea later in the communal lounge and that they will be kind and understanding when she sits in the green winged chair.
Amber Trent wants nothing so much as to die. This room, this flat is her prison, its pleasantly decorated walls and personal knick-knacks reminders of a time when she had choices. Her escape is to the doctor’s or the hospital for kind, understanding people to take great care in humiliating her as they hunt a vein or insert a tube, compassionately extending her life for no purpose beyond the fact they can.
Amber Trent likes her little patch of garden and the insistent birds. But they don’t answer her questions and don’t stimulate her like Rodney once did. Patrick and his son, whose name will come to her shortly are kind and attentive but more absent than present. The residents and warden smile and nod but soon tire of Amber’s silence. Rodney used her silence as his backdrop; it created the auditorium for his soliloquys. Now that theatre is hushed but no longer expectant and all Amber wants is for the curtain to close.
Amber Trent knows people would wonder at her greatest wish, telling her what she has to live for. But they don’t see it as Amber sees it. The golden silence that makes up most of her day is, without Rodney, not just the absence of noise but the absence of hope.
Amber Trent is no longer still; her shoulders heave in silent sobs as a single tear slowly wends its way down her cheek.
TanGental 
Oh how sad 😢😟
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So sad. I really hope this is not how my mom feels. Sigh.
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Welcome back Geoff. This is so sad, and it scares me , really scares me 💜
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Very moving, Geoff.
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So sad Geoff and so true for so many.
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Sad story, Geoff. I think I’ll set up an eye blinking communication process that says, “Just shoot me.”
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Geoff, you nailed it: our sadness at aging alone, longing for death to relieve us of our emptiness and lack of purpose.
I remember a time when our aging parents lived with or close to their family members. And this is still the case in many other cultures. Where did we go astray in housing our elders in separate homes and institutions?
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THe sorrow of aging along you have captured brilliantly – reminded me of the talks I used to have when I visited my grandmother. Unfortunately, it wasn’t often because she was in what was euphemistically called a rest home, very far from where I lived. I tried to call every week though – she lived to be 103, and starved herself to death, we think, at the end..
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A real tragedy to have no one who connects with her.
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😥 Beautiful and sad.
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Wow. Really powerful Geoff. Thank you!
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You’ve stepped into a different pool I see and such ripples you made.
Well done Geoff !
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