Treasure

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Imagine you are eighty years old and have a treasure from your life that is important to you. Can you do that? If so what would that treasure be? I can't (to answer the first question) and I have no idea (to answer the second question).

I cannot imagine being eighty years old, even though I'm only a hop, skip and jump away from it. It's not that I can't grasp the concept of being old as it is easy for me to visualise being someone else and being old. I've written many a character who is eighty or beyond, watched them wither then die, and cried a little at their passing. I've even convincingly played an eighty year old woman on stage.

Yet I cannot picture myself at eighty, either as a decrepit marionette kept moving by the strings of medical science, or as sprightly old boiler still remembering the spring chicken she once was. I close my eyes, concentrate on my breathing and see if I can find a reality between those two extremes.

Instead, I see a coffin in an open field, and when I look into the coffin, I see not myself but my eighty three year old mother. She is lying as she did over ten years ago, an empty shell devoid of everything she was, lifeless, her skin pale and waxen. I almost do not recognise her when I first see her, as I almost did not recognise her then. There is no peace on that odd doll-like face. Instead, she looks peeved as if all the bitterness she hid so well for all those years, and from all the world except me, has finally found its way to the surface to be trapped with her in death, instead of escaping from her forever.

Only her hair is as soft and beautiful as always, the colour a pearly grey, highlighted with silver. It was how I knew it was really her. I have inherited my mother's hair, at least the silvery sheen. The rest is still the dark of my youth. If that must change, I'm hoping for the pearly grey, the prettiest grey I have ever seen.

Yet I still cannot see myself at eighty and I have no life's treasure to share with you. All I have is my life itself. And that is treasure enough.

Inspired by a prompt from Jill Badonsky in The Muse Is IN Writing Club.