Fanny

attended chapel every Sunday, but she had been missing that day.

I stopped, knocked on the open door, and asked if she was all right. Still surprisingly healthy for a woman of almost one hundred years, she turned and beckoned me in. A tear streamed down her left cheek. She invited me to sit down next to her with a wave of her hand. My teenage daughter stood outside. Fanny and I sat in silence for a while before she said anything.

“I don’t know why I am still alive…I never thought I would live this long…Why?…There is no one left…my husband is dead…my children are dead…all gone…why I am still here?”  As one hundred approached, despair festered.

No one should outlive everyone they loved, married, birthed. What comfort could I be? We sat. I held her hand. We prayed. We cried. After a while I arose, squeezed her hand, kissed her on the forehead, said I would continue to pray for her and said goodbye.

Turning to leave, I saw my daughter had been crying with us. Yet, by remaining invisible, she had graciously allowed the scene to go on without distraction. On the way home, I thanked her for her patience and told her how much I loved her. All the while trying to comprehend the pain if I should lose her or, like Fanny, lose everyone and everything I loved.

For many, living until one hundred may be a goal, for others dreaded.

What is to be said to someone who has lived as full and long a life as Fanny? Few have lived so long. Fewer have survived all their loved ones. Yet, many, nay all, live with pain.

“Life is what you make it,” we are told. But it is also what life has dealt you. Loss. Isolation. Loneliness. Pain. All real. Unbearably so for many.

Fanny died days before of her one hundredth birthday. Mercifully, she would say.