Before it all wipes away! [Freewrite prompt - sunburn]

In place of the blush of youth was now, in her slack and wrinkled cheeks, the sunburn of age. And her curves, once sharp arced as a pencil-draw, had blunted.

One could see that the years had been harsh on her. Her dulled eyes had that tepid look of someone to whom nothing was new, of someone conscious that life had stopped giving but was now taking from her.

The feeling intoxicated us. When she spoke, her voice was broken, and yet like an off-tune harp, there was still a certain tune, that reminded you of an old rhythm.

Here slowing, there pacing, she told of younger years, of earliest dreams, of places, and of people been and gone’; of loss and gain.

Her words were few, but deep, as though rehearsed. Some recollections she left unfinished, others, she never found a finish.

They both harped and haunted her, just as they moved us to tears, carried along the travels and travails of a woman through nine decades and several geographies, to this hospital lobby where only a moment ago, the doctor had diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s disease.

“You are not going to remember things, and place so well”, the doctor had said, but she was determined to remember, to enjoy whatever little thing, whatever little life she had left. And she wanted every facet of it recorded by we, her hearers -before it all wiped away.

And for all its worth, I wrote down her entire story of my most loved and courageous grandmother, unashamed of the tears that flooded from my eyes.