Matilda Caruso was 93 years old. She was a quiet woman who had spent half her life in the service of her family. She knew nothing else but homemaking and had little experience with the world outside her home. She grew old, her husband died, her friends died, she grew frail. As Matilda aged, her children got guiltier. They had had to take care of her and assuage their conscience.
Matilda Grayson was a slight woman with snow white hair, which she wore in layered braids. She had aged and was now over 90 years of age. Her lined face framed her pale blue and ever alert eyes. In her earlier years, Matilda had been a teacher and then the town historian. She now had a room in the Zurich Care Facility – a title that reminded her, whenever she thought of it, that she was now warhoused like a vintage antique car.
Matilda’s sight had dimmed over the years so that she now had difficulty reading her Maigret mysteries. This gave her time to contemplate what it meant to be a “resident” at the Zurich Care Facility.Matilda had already concluded that residency was an empty category. She felt she was more like a transient…passing through, then on, then away was her likely outcome. She was simply being processed.
Larry Ullian has been called a writer, but he’s never published except as a curriculum designer/technical writer/grant writer. He is retired and now spends some of his time reviewing and rewriting pieces he’s written but not shared over the years. Now’s the time to try.