text: The TV plays wheel of fortune in the background while someone’s grandmother rocks back and forth in her favorite rocking chair. Her fluff of fine white hair, that she still put in curlers, reflects the light around her face and head like a halo. She’s in her warmest house coat with the matching slippers on her feet. Normally she’s in bed and asleep by now, but for some reason she stayed up when everyone else made their way to their rooms. So now she rocks alone in the living room with the TV playing quietly in the background; her attention focused through the gauzy curtains and out the window to the dark streets. Cradling a cup of once hot tea turned cold by lack of attention she continues to rock. The room smells like the detergent she uses. Or rather, the detergent that is used by her granddaughter that cares for her. She stops her rocking just long enough to shakily put the tea down beside an orange that lays peeled, quartered, and waiting on the side table. With her task done she returns to her repetitive motion as she lets her gaze drift beyond the curtains. The dark, paired with the glow from the TV is almost therapeutic with how unobtrusive it is. In the dark truths can be hidden, like someone’s exact age or the emotions that they may be wearing on their face. But the gentle smile on her face could not be hidden even by the dim lighting. She sits there rocking back and forth remember all the things in her life that had made it so worth living the past eighty-nine years. When she was sixteen she fell in love, by eighteen she was married, and the birth of her daughter soon followed that. Three small boys joined them and for twenty-three wonderful years she raised her children until they set off on their own adventures. She had hosted approximately sixty-three Christmases, Easter dinners, and New Year’s Eve parties. She had stayed a devout Christian attending mass roughly 4,272 times sense she was born. She had been there for all her children’s marriages, both the ones that had lasted and those that had fallen apart. She had watched her seven grandchildren’s and two great grandchildren’s births and attended every birthday they had had. She had been there when her husband had died at eighty, finally released from his pain after fighting cancer for almost two years. Somewhere behind her the television changed programs and opera played softly in the background. Stopping the rocking motion of the chair once more, she bends forward to pick up the tabby cat that has wound itself around her legs. “There you are Samson,” she says putting the purring mass of orange fur in her lap. With her companion to keep her company she starts her slow rocking again. Now she thinks about all the times that she had triumphed over struggles in her life with the help of others; and those struggles that she had triumphed with her own strength and faith. Twenty years into their marriage her husband and she had experienced a very rough patch indeed. Although they never fought in front of the children they had stopped talking and loving. On one long walk that she had taken after an especially nasty whispered fight she had stopped and cried on a bench in the park. There she had prayed. She had prayed for strength and patience to listen to what her husband needed and that he would do the same. The rough patch had eventually ended, and they learned to love each other again. Her faith was shaken to its core once more when her mother and father died the same night, only hours apart. This time too, she had taken time to pray and listen, waiting to find her way. Which she did. The day that they had found out that her husband, that she had loved for so many years, had fallen to cancer they had both held each other and cried. This was one of the most difficult struggles they had ever faced together. When the two-year anniversary had approached for his diagnosis he had taken her hand and told her that he could maintain the struggle no longer. This time she had cried because she knew he was right. They buried him in the town where they had met, three hours away from where she sat now. After the tears were done, she praised the Lord above with thanks for releasing him from his pain. She rocked back and forth, stroking the purring cat as a tear ran down her face. It was not a tear of sadness but of relief in finding solace from the events of her life. She would soon be gone. Although she did not know when, she was happy to go. It was time and when God called she knew she would answer willingly. She put her hand, with knuckles gnarled by arthritis, on the window pain that the gentle rain was tapping. More tears joined the ones of relief. Her loving husband stood on the lawn in the rain, smiling and waiting. She had seen him so many times over the past month. She leaned back smiling as the tears traced a salty stream down her face. She closed her eyes with the image of her husband watching her. As a hand touched her shoulder she opened her eyes and looked up at the figure that was standing there. Her husband, as he was when they first fell in love stood there, smiling down. She smiled back and kissed the hand before starting to rock again with closed eyes. The rain stopped not long after, as the sky became grey with the coming morning. At dawn a young woman dressed in a floral print dress and blue ballet flats joined the young man on the lawn. She had light blond hair and bright blue eyes. The pair took each other’s hands and shared a slow kiss before looking back at the old woman in the still chair; the orange cat still sitting in her lap.