I once met an old woman who had a lot of hate inside her. You could see the pain in her eyes and literally feel the sorrow in her heart. I sat with her often in the short while that I knew her.
Eventually, after listening to how angry she seemed with the world I had to ask, “It seems like you have a lot of anger in you, is there a reason?”
The old woman shot me a look and I thought for a moment that she was about to unleash her fury on me. I suddenly thought I had made a mistake and maybe should not have said anything, and perhaps it would have just been easiest to let her sit in misery. Then, something happened that I did not expect, she wept. I reached for her hand and she allowed me to hold it while she softly shook from the emotion that was now draining out of her.
As she wiped her eyes she said, “Damn you for these tears.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “It’s just my way I guess, to ask people that seem to be suffering how they are doing or what caused it.”
“Oh honey, I don’t mean you,” she said. Her voice was the softest and calmest that I have ever heard come from her. The woman looked up with her blue, glossy eyes, wrinkles lining her face, looking like the land I once drove through in the west, dry and aged, but with a lifetime of history that told a story. She shook her fist towards the ceiling, “I mean that sonofabitch who I married. He was such a cruel man, never taking the time to understand me, and never once in the last twenty years of his life telling me that he loved me.”
“How long were you married?” I asked.
“Forty-seven years and then he just came home one evening, went to bed and died.” The woman adjusted herself in the chair she sat in at the kitchen table. “I never forgave him for dying.”
“For dying, but don’t we all die?” I said.
The old woman just smiled at me and said, “Maybe what I meant to say is that I never forgave him for not living. Our life was weighed down by work, useless worries, hate, and constant interruptions. When we first got married we had dreams. We talked about all of the places we wanted to travel and the life we wanted for ourselves. We were once inseparable. He wanted to be a writer and I wanted to be a veterinarian. I have always loved animals.”
“Did he ever become a writer? Did you get to work with animals?”
“Life is mostly wasting time. It’s getting caught up in the things that don’t matter, and then one day you wake up old or you come home, go to bed and close your eyes forever.” The woman wiped her eyes with the cloth napkin that sat in her lap, “He wrote a few stories and one book, but gave up. He couldn’t handle the rejections and just stopped, and then we had bills to pay, so he went to work. He worked so much that I hardly saw him, and then he would come home and just stare at the corner where the typewriter gathered dust. I tried to encourage him to write but it seemed like his ambition left him with the last story he wrote.”
“That’s sad,” I said. “I would hate to leave my dreams behind.”
“I had to go to work at the local factory, never able to afford schooling to become a vet. But, well, I did volunteer to walk the dogs at the human society and spend time playing with them. I got to pet the cats and feed them, and even got to brush a few horses along the way. That was when I was happiest.”
“You said that your husband became ‘cruel.’ Did he hurt you?” I was hesitant to ask but I figured at this point maybe she needed to talk about it.
“He never laid a hand on me in anger, and eventually he stopped laying his hands on me in love. He just stopped being present and his cruelty was silence. He was absent when sitting right next to me in his chair, and drowning himself in a bottle. Eventually, I grew into an old woman with forgotten dreams and he grew more bitter. We became lonely strangers in the same room, staring at walls.”
I was starting to realize why this woman always seemed so sad and angry. She never forgave her husband, and never forgave herself for not following her dreams. Somewhere along the way she lost who she was and wanted to be, and anger and resentment stayed in her heart. It made her age early. It seemed as if her internal wounds showed on her rough skin.
Months later, the old woman asked to see me as she lay dying. A Hospice nurse was the only one in her apartment. I sat next to her, little ceramic figurines of farm animals, dogs and cats, and a few deer and brown bears lined the table next to her bed. There was a black and white picture of a little girl with a puppy on her lap. The girl’s eyes looked familiar and I knew it was the old woman. She reached for my hand and said to me in a raspy whisper, “Don’t forget to follow your dreams. No matter what, don’t forget, and always, always forgive. Forgive those who wronged you, but forgive for yourself and find some peace in letting go of the things you cannot control. Otherwise, you will end up an old man who comes home silent and lonely, laying his head down on a smooth pillow, and simply fades away.
I held the woman’s hand throughout the night and the next day she was no longer able to talk. In one single moment, she reached her hands up high in the air above her, and with a slight grin on her face, her arms fell to her stomach and she died.
I was contacted a week later to come and get her ashes. She left me, someone she had only known for a short while in the scheme of life, in her will as the person she wanted to have them. The rest of her belongings were given to a local animal shelter to sell and use the profits for the animals. There was a note that the mortician gave me as he passed me the urn. It was in the old woman’s handwriting, “There will be many things in life that will disappoint you, and many dreams that you will not attain, but don’t let that stop you from trying. Don’t let it make you hold onto anger. Don’t waste time worrying about things that have not even happened and the things you cannot control. Don’t be selfish with your words or your actions. In the end, it will do you no good and only cause you harm. Find someone to love and tell them often. Life is about the experiences.”
I took the woman’s ashes to a trail that I walked often. It was a spot where the deer crossed, leaving their tracks and an indentation where they laid to rest. It was a place where the geese stopped on their journey north and south, and where the ducks gathered to live a lifetime with their mate. A place where I once saw a coyote howl, taking silence away from the woods as other coyotes joined in. It was a place where I could breathe in deep, watch the sunset, and dream of who I wanted to become.
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