“Getting old is getting old,” she said

To herself as she got out of bed.

It was the day before her birthday

And the day after Halloween,

The morning dark and dim and fragrant

With stale leaves and the after-odor

Of trick-or-treaters and candy wrappers.

 

Helga Caruthers slid her tired old feet

Out from under a tangle of bedsheet

And onto the cold hardwood floor

Of her bedroom. “Gotten old,” she said

Out loud to the silence of the house.

“Or is it ‘Got Old’?” she said again.

“Old as dirt, at any rate,” she said.

 

Helga was rounding out her eighty-fourth year

Under heaven and feeling increasingly unclear

About what she should do with her life

Three years now after the entire family,

Son and daughter with spouses and children

And children’s children had gathered round

The hospice bed and said their goodbyes

To Joseph Caruthers, Helga’s man

Of sixty years and happy head of the clan.

What a moment that had been,

The death bed placed in the living room —

Such a juxtaposition — and the generations

Toasting Joe with his favorite whisky

As his soul hesitated, then ambled on.

Now Helga, still bleary with sleep,

Ambled through that same room, deep

In just-awakened thought and semi-dread

To face the day and its emerging troubles.

She made her way to the front door

And opened it to the light of the dawn

To check for tricks leftover in the street

And the dregs of treats and a barking dog,

Clouds on the horizon with a hint of fog

Dispersing as the sunrise claimed the morning

For beauty despite the neighbors’

Constantly overflowing garbage can

And a faint but persistent malodor

Carried on the breezes of autumn.

The first of November, and strangely warm,

Thought Helga as an idea began to form

Within the well of hope deep in her mind.

She turned back inside to make coffee

And have a piece of chocolate, her morning

Ritual to read the message on the wrapper:

“This is the first day of the rest of your life.”

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