Until The Good Lord Calls Her Home

A work of Creative Non-Fiction

Her eyes sprang open just as her body was shifting from her side to her back.  Her constant companion, physical discomfort, greeted her spine with a shock of rolling pain.  Is this all I have to look forward to in my life, she thought as her mind tried to clear away the dark dreams from the night.

Pearl was seventy eight, and her second back surgery in a period of three short years was just nine months behind her.  A day without pain was something that didn’t even exist in her dreams anymore.  She shared her small townhouse with no other living thing; no person, no animal, no fish, no plant.  The only voice besides her own was from the TV and the occasional phone call.  Days would pass without the hopeful sound of a ring.  On more than one occasion, she would lift the receiver, not to make a call, but just to check for a dial tone. 

Today was to be no different than any other day in Pearl’s life.  She would get up.  Open her blinds.  Shuffle into the kitchen donning her every-other-Christmas gifts of slippers and robe.  Stick something frozen in the microwave to eat for breakfast.  Sit in her chair.  Doze-off while watching the news or reading a borrowed book from the library.  If she was feeling energetic, she would go into her small office and check the computer.  Emails, usually none.  Obituaries, always someone.  Day after day, this is her life.

Pearl’s now grown three children with families of their own all lived in a different state from her.  Even though they were all in the same city, she refused to even consider moving.  She would recite her philosophy to any who would inquire about why she didn’t live near them “You can’t follow your children around in life” as though it were her mantra.  So instead of following her children around, she resounded herself to waiting for them.  Waiting for them to call, email, visit.  The problem was, they didn’t do any of these very often.

To say Pearl was hopeless would not be quite true.  She did have a hope for the life after this.  But her hope for anything good to come out of whatever remaining time she had left on earth, in her physical body, had long vanished.  Losing her hope was not a sudden loss rather a gradual evolution into bitterness.  It was a though her distaste for life and anything it had to offer became familiar and comfortable as it lingered in her life.  Almost like an old friend, she began to trust her sour disposition.  Count on it to show up each day to keep her company.

Ironically Pearl’s own mother spent the last decade of her life in much the same way.  Eventually, she gave into the alluring call of her own mind; lost to the enticing memories of better days.  This generational pattern is not lost on Pearl’s two daughters.  She silently wonders if the fleeting calls and rare visits are born out of their fear of catching “The family curse of becoming a bitter old woman”.

She never imagined her life would end this way.  But her time for change is too far past, she believes.  Ponderings of this type come less frequently during her long days as she has resigned herself to what she believes to be the disappointing, yet inevitable end to her story.

Yet it is no longer sad to her.  It is just the way it is.  Pearl’s final plans to ensure a quick and orderly wrapping-up-of-her-earthly-affairs-once-she-passes are in place.  She will not be a burden to her children.  She will not follow them around.  She will just sit, and wait in her robe and slippers, alone, until the good Lord mercifully calls her home.